Wal-Mart Firearms and Ammo Policy Change

[olstyn]

4. ” as well as other firearms and ammunition for hunting and sports shooting” This statement is complete ignorance. 90% of the shooting sports activity in the United States at this point in time is done with handguns. USPSA, IDPA, SASS, etc. are all handgun centric and the common handgun cartridges like 9mm, .40 S&W, and .45 ACP that you have decided to stop selling are the primary ammunition used in competitive shooting in this country at this time. But I am sure that none of your social justice advisors know that. Apparently the senior management of Walmart knows as much about “shooting sports” as a giraffe knows about Shakespeare.

I'm with you, I really am, but this line of argument is a bit off for me. What percentage of USPSA, IDPA, 3-gun, and/or SASS competitors actually use factory ammo that could be bought at Walmart? Only one of the guys I shoot with regularly uses factory ammo, and he's shooting major PF .38 super from Atlanta Arms, so not exactly stuff you could walk into your local Walmart and buy. The rest of us load our own 9mm or .40 as appropriate for our guns/divisions.

[TheRoland]

I'm with you, I really am, but this line of argument is a bit off for me. What percentage of USPSA, IDPA, 3-gun, and/or SASS competitors actually use factory ammo that could be bought at Walmart? Only one of the guys I shoot with regularly uses factory ammo, and he's shooting major PF .38 super from Atlanta Arms, so not exactly stuff you could walk into your local Walmart and buy. The rest of us load our own 9mm or .40 as appropriate for our guns/divisions.

According to equipment surveys at national level matches it's around somewhere between 25-50%, depending on division. Local matches I'd assume would be higher. So it's less than half but still a lot of people.

[Cypher]

You're barking at the moon, my friend. There is no way that whoever is going to read this message is paid nearly enough to either a) effect any change in Walmart's business operations or b) give a shit.

I suspect they won't even open the email

[Zincwarrior]

No, what'll possibly happen will be that the store will call the cops, point out the clearly posted "no open carry" signage and then the person carrying openly will be charged with criminal trespass.

Playing it out, those fools will represent themselves in court, claim "muh rights" and then get to spend a couple of months in the county lockup.

So...all's well that ends well then?

[olstyn]

According to equipment surveys at national level matches it's around somewhere between 25-50%, depending on division. Local matches I'd assume would be higher. So it's less than half but still a lot of people.

Fair enough. How many of the people shooting factory ammo in matches were actually buying it at Walmart vs their local gun store, or SGAmmo.com or Brownells, etc.? Is this actually a significant revenue stream for Walmart?

[Cypher]

No, what'll possibly happen will be that the store will call the cops, point out the clearly posted "no open carry" signage and then the person carrying openly will be charged with criminal trespass.

Playing it out, those fools will represent themselves in court, claim "muh rights" and then get to spend a couple of months in the county lockup.

I strongly suspect that if enough people push the issue Walmart and the others will simply ban all guns on their property.

[Stephanie B]

I strongly suspect that if enough people push the issue Walmart and the others will simply ban all guns on their property.

Yes. Far be it from me to suggest that the OC crowd deserves a beating with a length of garden hose (or a T-ball bat). But they are to 2A what porn shops are to 1A.

[Cypher]

Yes. Far be it from me to suggest that the OC crowd deserves a beating with a length of garden hose (or a T-ball bat). But they are to 2A what porn shops are to 1A.

When I was in 3rd grade my sister broke my nose with a T-ball bat

[fatdog]

You're barking at the moon, my friend. There is no way that whoever is going to read this message is paid nearly enough to either a) effect any change in Walmart's business operations or b) give a shit.

Of course, all I have done today is piss a few drops into the big data science pool for them today. The keywords they had to associate with my quitting get a higher score because of my past verifiable history as a customer (vs say the random negative comment they got today). The CS clerk who answered my email forwarded it to no one.

She just fed it to the data pool which entered the keyword associations with the negative event (me, who had spent some real money over time quitting them). Their giant always crunching data science model has new new things to cross correlate like the acronyms of the competition organizations which will turn up some positive correlations with "shooting sports". It gives them today's negative sentiment score and associations, and like I said, my input gets a lot higher weighting in their model because the account did in fact close and I had in fact spend significant money as an individual.

Of course competitive shooters do not make any significant portion of their ammo sales, and mostly reload their own, but that is not a fact some big data science model, the only place my comments went, is ever going to be able to discern or correlate. The model is stuck with my comments and those associations in their negative sentiment analysis for a few days as they draw associations with the policy change. Nobody at an outfit like that ever really looks at the anecdotal individual emails or messages.

[0ddl0t]

I wouldn't be as disappointed in Walmart if they just stopped selling ammo, but throwing their support behind a new AWB is worthy of a boycott imo.