Tuesday, October 15, 2019
Guns in Walmart
Something that is often brought up in the debate about the 2nd Amendment is the fact that Walmart and other similar stores sell firearms. The Walmart brand does not give the average person the confidence that they take selling guns seriously, but do they? Before September 2019 and the shootings inside of a Walmart in El Paso, Walmart sold guns in about half of their stores. In the late 2000's, Walmart started to expand on the normal hunting firearms that their stores carried, they started to sell automatic weapons. According to Hayley Peterson, a writer for Business Insider, tried to purchase a gun from Walmart. She found it very difficult to purchase a weapon. Walmart has to wait for the "green light" from the federal government in order to sell a gun while the federal law only requires a "red light", or extreme warning sign, to be present within three days. So Walmart is more cautious than the average firearms dealer when it comes to letting someone purchase a gun. It's also important to note that it took Peterson multiple hours talking to different Walmart locations in order to find that sold firearms. I think it is fairly obvious that Walmart should have never sold AR-15 and other automatic weapons, but nowadays the notion that anyone can just roll over to their local Walmart and buy a deadly weapon is largely inaccurate. After the El Paso shooting, Walmart decided to stop selling guns and ammunition for good.
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I agree with your statement on Walmart selling guns. While a lot of people use this as a way to say gun regulations are too lenient, Walmart is not the problem. They are very mindful of the weapons they sell and take precautions in selling them (https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2018/02/28/walmart-statement-on-firearms-policy). However, the larger issue at the moment is gun shows, where people are allowed to buy guns without a background check. A lot of people worrying about gun regulations have been focusing their well intentioned energy on the wrong parts of the policies surrounding gun buying.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that Walmart is not as careless with selling guns as people make them out to be, meaning that Walmart is not the problem when talking about gun violence. However, despite this, Walmart did recently decide to stop selling handguns and some types of ammo as Lisette Voytko explains in this Forbes article https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisettevoytko/2019/09/03/walmart-stops-selling-ammo-and-handguns-bans-open-carry/#58ec76f84cb7. Despite the fact that Walmart is not the issue, many people become emotionally charged after shootings (rightfully so), which makes it difficult for them to consider the full scope of the issue, which caused people to pressure Walmart to change their gun policies. This change will result in Walmart losing 11% of its ammunition sales even though they are not particularly the issue when talking about gun violence.
ReplyDeleteI do agree that it's easy to get paranoid about Walmart selling guns after the shootings, especially with the safety concerns involved. It's like buying a game at Walmart and seeing another person holding a gun to buy it right behind you. But Walmart is cooperating with the publics wishes. addition to stopping the selling of guns, Walmart also do lengthy background checks if a customer wants a gun. They have also stopped selling toys that even look like guns. They also said that they didn't want gun owners in open carry states to carry guns around visibly in anything corporation owned by Walmart, etc. Sam's Club.
DeleteIt's bizarre to me that Walmart takes more precautions than the average gun store. Beyond that, I wonder how online guns sales work. I remember hearing a few years ago that Walmart sold assault rifles online, which is weird to me. Do these online sales have the same level of background check?
ReplyDeleteI don't think that it's essentially an issue about whether Walmart sells guns or not, I think that the larger issue is how guns can be easily accessed. While there are background checks and systems to protect the people from selling guns to the wrong people, I think that this doesn't address the mere fact that guns are now just a part of American life. You could find one at a grocery/drug store if you wanted to. If you can find one at Walmart, I'm sure that there are smaller chains and private stores that sell as well so I think it's not necessarily about Walmart itself, but what it represents in terms of the accessibility of guns.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your conclusion that some stores like Walmart do not take the sale of firearms lightly and ensure that their costumers endure a long legal process in order to obtain the guns. However, I think it's important to note that while Walmart may have these regulations, there are still a lot of glaring loopholes and ways to access firearms easily. Gun shows and straw purchasing make it easy to buy high-caliber weapons, and people will always find a way to illegally obtain them. Unfortunately, the reality is that having a few cautious dealers won't prevent those deemed unfit to own a weapon from obtaining one. El Paso as well as other recent shootings show that even if stores like Walmart stop selling guns, weapons are still falling into the hands of the wrong people.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Walmart is not the issue, however it opens up the broader issue of the accessibility of guns in the United States. It's definitely an issue that guns are so easily accessible across the United States, and it's not a coincidence that the U.S also has the most number of mass shootings and gun violence than any other country. With the development of 3D printed guns, they're just getting more and more accessible to citizens in the US.
ReplyDeleteTouching upon the 2nd amendment, I do believe Americans hold the right to bear arms, but only certain arms. Since the 2nd amendment was made when gun technology wasn't as advanced as today, the 2nd amendment should only apply to guns that the founding fathers intended it to be for. Walmart's policy involving guns seems to be too extreme and what guns they sell should either be limited or removed.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your post. The right to bear arms is for protection, and assault rifles are for what their name entails, assault. I agree with Shay's comment above. The 2nd amendment is made to not include these advanced weapons of today. In the "District of Columbia v. Heller," the Supreme Court decided the Second Amendment applied specifically to possession of self-defense firearms.
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