Walmart Takes Away Walmart Shoppers' Guns!

By asking them to please not open carry. SAME THING.

Following the horrific massacre at a Walmart in El Paso last month, plus a spate of threats from gunhumpers who wanted to shoot up Walmarts themselves, the Walmart company announced today it would stop selling ammunition in calibers used for handguns and for rifles like the AR-15 and AK-47 (and their knockoffs). What's more, the retailer said it would ask shoppers to no longer openly carry firearms in its stores, even in states with open carry laws.

We haven't looked extensively at Twitter, but we'll assume it's full of messages from wits explaining Walmart won't have to tell them to leave their guns home, because they're now BOYCOTTING this intolerable assault on liberty. Like this one dude with seven followers:

#Walmart I laugh at your politically motivated business decisions. Why only now? It's because you understand the po… https: //t.co/T2Qh1qtFqx

— Charles A Price (@Charles A Price) 1567535606.0 

That's pretty good: Walmart only understands the "power of an uneducated mob rule populous," so I'm going to make you listen with a mass boycott. My uneducated mob will REALLY make the point.

Rather than pulling product from the shelves, Walmart will simply not replace inventories of handgun ammunition and .223 caliber and 5.56 mm rifle ammo. (It already stopped selling assault-style rifles in 2015.) In addition, the chain said it would stop selling handguns in Alaska, the last place it still sells handguns after it stopped carrying them in the rest of the country back in the 1990s.

As for the open-carry restrictions, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said in a memo to employees on Tuesday it's just too darn risky to encourage Walmart shoppers to carry loaded weapons.

"We believe the opportunity for someone to misinterpret a situation, even in open carry states, could lead to tragic results [...] We hope that everyone will understand the circumstances that led to this new policy and will respect the concerns of their fellow shoppers and our associates."

"We've also been listening to a lot of people inside and outside our company as we think about the role we can play in helping to make the country safer," he added. "It's clear to us that the status quo is unacceptable."

McMillon asked shoppers to please understand why his company is no longer willing to arm the coming civil war.

We know these decisions will inconvenience some of our customers, and we hope they will understand [...] As  a company, we experienced two horrific events in one week, and we will never be the same.

We actually had to google that second "horrific event," which was a July 30 shooting by a disgruntled employee who killed two other employees and wounded a cop at a Walmart in Mississippi. Makes you wonder why Walmart hadn't instead armed all its employees to prevent such nastiness.

Noting that he is himself a gun owner who enjoys hunting and has fond boyhood memories of raising bird dogs (before firing them when they tried to unionize), McMillon said the store would now focus on the hunting and sport-shooting segment of the market.

Walmart's remaining assortment in stores "will include long barrel deer rifles and shotguns, much of the ammunition they require, as well as hunting and sporting accessories and apparel," he said.

Look for a big clearance sale on tacticool accessories, we guess. Also, CNBC offers this Information McNugget without comment. Long before the announcement on ammo and open carry,

Walmart last month said it would be pulling violent video game displays out of stores following the shootings.

Not the games themselves, which is just as well since that's a bullshit argument anyway. But no more cardboard standy-things promoting the shoot-em-ups, and no more leaving TVs and game systems on with MurderCombatValorKillTeam 7 on demo mode.

Also, we should probably note that CNBC can't even keep its massacres straight. Its story reports Walmart stopped selling guns and ammo to shoppers under 21 years of age following "the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Texas, in 2018" [sic]. Easy enough mistake -- there was a high school shooting in Texas (Santa Fe) in 2018, too, but that was later.

Now get ready for America's gunhumpers in open carry states to flock to Walmarts, just as they did to Target a few years back, to prove they will not be intimidated by the retailer's ugly tyranny.

Now GRAB YR GUNS, it's our OPEN THREAD!

[ CNBC / NYT ]

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