Wal-Mart's New Policies on Gun Purchases - What Next?

Wal-Mart Strengthens Company Policies

Wal-Mart announced this week it has implemented new policies regarding gun purchases at the big box retailer. These changes will affect all 1,100 of the Wal-Mart stores and include creating a system which notifies Wal-Mart if a gun sold by them is used in a crime. This system would notify a clerk in the event you attempted to purchase another gun through Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart also plans to save images of your gun purchases just in case law enforcement needs them in the future. Finally, the last change they plan to make involves the employees, strengthening the background checks conducted on employees who handle the guns.

These are not minor changes to already enforced policies at Wal-Mart. These are extreme measures which in my opinion, go to far. Profiling is a word that can be used in this instance. Creating a database of citizens who purchase guns for "in case of" situations is ludicrous. Wal-Mart should not have my picture on file because I decided to exercise my constitutional rights of owning a gun. Nor should the police have my picture on file because I chose to exercise my rights as a citizen of the United States. I realize this is to help deter and prevent crime, but when do we say enough is enough and stop letting our rights as citizens become deteriorated to the point of non-existence?

Understand that we must register our guns regardless of where we bought them. So then why must they have our picture on file? You have our name, address, phone number, background check, and purchase time but that is not enough. Now we must be entered into a database of known gun owners to further scrutinize and track law abiding citizens. Keep in mind Wal-Mart is the nation's largest gun dealer. They sell more guns then any other company in the United States. This is going to be a giant database which could be used by other agencies such as law enforcement how they see fit. Does nobody else see this as a problem?