Wal-Mart Stores Inc, the United States’ top seller of guns and ammunition, said on Wednesday it would stop selling the AR-15 and other semi-automatic rifles stores because of sluggish demand and focus instead on “hunting and sportsman firearms”.
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“It’s based on what customers are looking for and what they were buying when they come into Wal-Mart”, spokesman Kory Lundberg said. It said that it was adding to its offerings of shotguns and other weapons used by hunters. Walmart, however, says that the sales of these assault type weapons have been flagging for some time, leading to a phased reduction of these rifles which had been going on “for a while”.
The news picked up online Wednesday hours after a disgruntled former employee fatally shot two Virginia journalists on camera, then posted online videos of the crime. Walmart still sells ammunition for handguns and modern sporting rifles though, Lundberg says.
The National Shooting Sports Foundation said demand for the type of rifles that will no longer be sold by Wal-Mart remained strong.
“Sales of rifles are up”, said Arkadi Gerney, a senior vice president at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. Earlier this year, it vowed to remove merchandise from its stores that depicted the Confederate battle flag.
‘Need more than paltry measures’
. No one at either company could be reached for comment regarding Wal-Mart’s decision.
“We need more than paltry measures to truly take on gun violence”, said the public advocate, Letitia James. Instead, the change comes from a drop in customer demand. Wal-Mart Stores’s revenue for the quarter was up.0% on a year-over-year basis. After a federal judge initially ruled that Wal-Mart must allow the shareholder vote, an appeals court later lifted that injunction, meaning Wal-Mart will not be required to include this proposal at its upcoming annual shareholders meeting.
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“This product, being what it is, obviously gets a lot more attention, but the process Walmart is doing here is exactly the same as it would be if it were something on the grocery aisle”, Lundberg told NBC News.
