More and more large retailers are asking customers not to keep guns open in their stores after the mass shootings at a Walmart in Texas last month.
Walgreens, Wegmans, and CVS are the latest national retail chains to apply to Walmart on Wednesday. Soon after, Kroger asked customers not to do this, even in countries known as open traffic. Walmart’s order came with the announcement that the country’s largest retailer would stop selling MyWegmansConnect ammunition for pistols and “ammunition for short-barreled rifles.”
Walmart’s decision follows a mass shooting at a store in El Paso, Texas, in early August, in which 22 people were killed. The same week, a suspended employee killed two employees at a Walmart in Mississippi where he worked.
The heartbreaking incidents
“As a company, we experience two terrible events in one week and will never be the same again,” said Doug McMillon, CEO of Walmart, in a message to employees Tuesday.
The week after the El Paso shooting, police arrested a gunman who caused mayhem when he entered Walmart in Springfield, Missouri. He wore armor and military-style clothing. In the same week, police questioned a man who described himself as an “anti-gun activist” after questioning a Florida Walmart employee about a weapon that “would kill 200 people.”
Within hours of Walmart’s announcement, Kroger, the nation’s largest supermarket chain, followed its own request to ask customers not to use them openly.
By our actions, Kroger has shown that we recognize the growing MyWegmansConnect chorus of Americans who no longer know the status quo and are committed to implementing concrete and meaningful reforms and weapons,” Kroger said in a statement.
Walgreens, CVS, and Wegmans made similar requests Thursday.
Walmart said the policy would not apply, but management was instructed to contact authorities if they felt threatened.
“It is a respectful request,” Walmart spokesman Ragan Dickens told HuffPost. And if they don’t, we request management to assess each situation. If someone poses a potential threat, the manager can contact the police.”
It’s unclear how other companies will apply the new guidelines, but human rights group Kris Brown told CNN that Walmart “wanted to tell the NRA that logic did not support what they said: these” good guys “with a weapon idea.” . obviously wrong. ”
