AR-15s getting pulled from Walmart's shelves — for a business reason
Business
AR-15s getting pulled from Walmart’s shelves — for a business reason
The nation’s largest retailer has announced certain semiautomatic rifles and weapons will be removed from its shelves because fewer people are buying them. The AR-15s and other modern sporting rifles were being sold at less than a third of the company’s 4,600 U.S. stores. Walmart will remove the remaining inventory as stores make a transition from summer to fall merchandise, which should take a week or two to complete. Company spokesman Kory Lundberg said that the decision to remove the weapons was not political and that the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer made the decision earlier this year.
This is done solely on what customer demand was. We are instead focusing on hunting and sportsman firearms.
Kory Lundberg, Walmart spokesman
In recent years, shareholders have placed some pressure on the company to reconsider its sales policies on products such as weapons that hold high-capacity magazines. Bushmaster variations of the semiautomatic AR-15 have been used in such high-profile mass shootings as the Sandy Hook massacre in Newtown, Conn., and the theater shooting in Aurora, Colo. Walmart scaled back the number of stores that sold guns around 2006, Lundberg said, but has no plans to stop the sale of guns altogether.
