Sam Walton would be ashamed at what his company has become.
Not content to mistreat their employees, Wal-Mart has now decided to insult and alienate a significant portion of its customer base. They’ve caved in to New York Mayor Bloomberg’s crusade to ban guns and established a policy that really gives me pause.
They’ve been harassing customers who purchase ammunition for some time now. A couple of years back, I went to buy a few boxes, and the cashier asked to see my ID. Okay, at my age, I’m flattered to get carded for anything. She then asked me to remove it from my wallet. I asked why, and she responded, “so I can put your information in the computer.” After a moment, it became obvious that she was putting in more than my birthdate, and I asked what else she was putting in. She said that they needed (at the very least) my driver’s license number.
Whoa. Hold on. I refused, and when I contacted their corporate office, they could not tell me exactly what their policy was on ammunition purchases, only that individual district managers had the power to enact their own policies. I asked the nice man on the phone if they were maintaining a database of people who purchase ammunition, and he said, “no, but we must verify age for handgun ammunition.” That still doesn’t explain why the clerk was told to enter personal information into the computer.
Nor does it explain why two friends of mine were detained while trying to purchase ten boxes of 9mm ammo. The cashier balked, saying she had to get a manager’s approval. They were made to wait almost 30 minutes while someone figured out which manager was qualified to approve such a sale.
When the manager arrived, my friends asked why this was all necessary, and the manager told them it was “probably illegal” to buy 1,000 rounds at once. They informed him that no such law existed, and he said, “well, when someone buys a lot of ammunition at once, we have to have a look at them.”
Good thing they weren’t…I don’t know, black?
(Said manager also informed them that he would have to report their suspicious purchase to the NRA.)
So, yeah, that’s Wal-Mart for you. And to think you could once buy Colt revolvers there.
To be honest, I’m not sure why they even bother selling guns at this point. Most locations in my area have a wizened selection of cheap sporting shotguns and smallbore rifles, and their prices are hardly competitive.
In any case, they’ve decided to implement new policies to make it even harder to buy guns. This from a company who sells them but hates them and mistrusts those who would buy them. The mind reels.
The initiative is called the Responsible Firearms Retailer Partnership. It requires several policies, most notably:
- Videotaping all firearms sales.
- Computerized Crime Gun Trace Log and Alert System
- Purchaser Declaration
- No Sales Without Background Check Result
This is 1984 stuff, gang. Let’s go down it item by item.
Videotaping all firearms sales. This doesn’t do anything to deter criminals. Criminals don’t buy guns in a well-lit, crowded store. In fact, they don’t buy them at stores, period. They get their guns on the street, or through straw purchases. This initiative does nothing but stigmatize legal gun buyers (which, of course, is what Bloomberg and his sort want).
Computerized Crime Gun Trace Log and Alert System. The BATFE already has a system like this in place. So, why another redundant system? Well:
Mayors Against Illegal Guns will develop a computerized system that participating retailers will implement over time to log crime gun traces relating to the retailer. Once the program is in place, if a customer who has a prior trace at that retailer attempts to purchase a firearm, the sale will be electronically flagged. The retailer would have discretion to proceed with the sale or stop the sale
The question presents itself, who runs this database, and who has access to it? Who are the security experts at Mayors against Illegal Guns who will prevent your information from being disseminated, sold or compromised?
Next up is the handy “Purchaser Declaration.” Again, this is absolutely pointless and redundant. All firearms purchases through retail channels must be accompanied by a form 4473, in which the purchaser signs under penalty of law that a) they are the legal buyer and b) there are no factors that would prohibit them from buying a firearm.
Asking the customer to fill out a separate piece of paper reaffirming their eligibility is simply time-consuming, rude, and again, raises the possibility that such information could be misused.
As far as not allowing transfers without a background check result, I’m of two minds. In case you’re unfamiliar with the system, it works as follows. You fill out the form and the retailer calls in the background check. There are three possible outcomes: proceed, delayed and denied. The first and third are obvious.
Sometimes a check result is delayed. This can be due to any number of factors. You could have a similar name to someone who’s not eligible to own firearms, the clerk may have read something off wrong to the operator, or they could simply not have immediate access to the records they need on the FBI’s end of things.
No matter what, they have five business days to check records, and that’s it. At the end of that period, if a check has not been returned, the dealer can legally release the gun to the customer.
Some dealers still choose not to transfer the gun until they’ve heard back from the FBI no matter what. They can do that, but it could be awhile. I’ve gotten results from the FBI as long as five weeks from when the check was originally called in. Do you feel like waiting that long?
Wal-Mart’s response to this argument will probably read something like, “well, what if we release the gun, and it turns out the person was ineligible? We could get in trouble!” Not true. At the end of the five-day period, the retailer has fulfilled his obligation under the law. If it takes the Federal Bureau of Investigation longer than five days to figure out that you’re really Chainsaw Pete, then it falls on them to recover the weapon.
There are also a bunch of feel-good stipulations like “Employee Responsibility Training,” which might actually be helpful, though from what I understand, employees must have special training to sell guns anyhow.
The plain fact is, criminals don’t get their guns at Wal-Mart. Criminals prefer small, cheap, concealable handguns (see Table 6), and Wal-Mart doesn’t sell those. Rifles and shotguns are very rarely used in crimes.
So, why are they doing this? It smells to me of corporate maneuvering. Wal-Mart is likely feeling the pressure from someone to get out of the gun business entirely. They also remember the backlash Kmart experienced when they openly caved to such pressure.
This is a way for Wal-Mart to get out of selling guns a bit more quietly. By pursuing these initiatives, they will see their income from firearms sales dwindle to such a point that they’ll be able to say, “well, we don’t make enough money from guns to have them taking up the shelf space, so we’re getting out.”
Everybody’s happy, nobody smells a rat, and they can use the freed-up floorspace to stock Spanish-language DVDs and NASCAR swag.