Barack Obama wants to know whether anyone with ambitions to work in his administration owns guns. Blogger Melissa Clouthier wonders whether average Americans might be asked the same question someday soon.

Actually, I had to endure just such a grilling from a social worker during the Bush administration, when we adopted our third child. It was one of the most infuriating experiences of my life.

Keep in mind that we already had adopted two children through the same agency and been subjected to three background checks by that time. Our previous social workers had never asked if I owned guns and, if so, how I stored them.

The query prompted a tense back-and-forth between the newbie social worker and me, in part because our children never even knew I had guns until she asked in front of them. As much as I hate to admit it for fear of losing my redneck credentials, they were hunting guns I hadn’t used in years.

My wife intervened to keep me from picking a Second Amendment fight over gun ownership with a meddlesome social worker who could have quashed the adoption. I followed her rules until the adoption was final. Now I’m back to deciding for myself how to store my guns.

(For the record, I don’t even keep ammunition in the house because I have only been hunting once in the past 14 years. I keep the guns in case I ever fulfill my dream of living on a farm.)

UPDATE: My wife reminded me of the most infuriating part of the social worker getting tough over the guns in our house — thy hypocrisy of her neither checking our home for chemicals stored in places that could be reached by children nor asking us about where we store them. We’ve always been quite careful on that front.

Seriously, what is more likely — that our five-year-old son would have searched for and been able to load and use my well-hidden high-powered rifle or 12-gauge shotgun, or that he might have found and been able to open a container of toxic chemicals.

Our social worker at Catholic Charities had her home-safety priorities way out of order. Thankfully, she left before the adoption was finalized, so she didn’t do our post-adoption home study.