This has been bugging me for a while.
A Central Edmonton gun shop just north of Stony Plain Road has implemented security rules since Covid19 that I just can't comply with, so I no longer shop there. I have bought a lot of gun related products, ammunition, reloading supplies and tools, and a significant number of guns from them, but I just can no longer give them my business.
The requirement, which was introduced some months ago, is in response to Alberta and Edmonton mandatory mask requirements while in businesses, and many other publicly accessible indoor places.
This Gun Shop's requirement, which is entirely of their own creation, is that customers who enter the store must stand 3 feet away while facing a wall-mounted, eye-level security camera. They must then lower their mask and allow their face to be photographed.
For a while they suggested that they were doing this because the City of Edmonton, Alberta Government, Edmonton Police Service, and the RCMP required it. But that simply was not true, and those claims no longer appear on their Home Page. However, the facial photographing demand is still in force, and IS still described on their Home Page.
The problem is that only they are demanding this, as far as I am aware of, and that there is no legal requirement that mandates it. Edmonton Cabelas has no such requirement, and I shopped at their store wearing a wide-brimmed hat and mask recently. Nobody said anything, even when I paid cash for a couple of gun cases and some gun cleaning supplies and declined to give my postal code to them.
The other problem is that NO PAL and NO identification is required to buy gun cases, reloading supplies and tools, gun cleaning supplies, rifle scopes and a bunch of other things, so why do they need to record a mug shot of every person entering their store?
I have no problem lowering my mask to allow a gun shop to compare it to the photograph on my PAL if I buy guns, ammunition, primers and other PAL items.
However, I won't submit to having a close-up mug shot photograph taken, just to walk into a store.
Or, just in order to purchase items that anyone can buy without even possessing a PAL.
HELL NO!
What do you think?
