After Mass Shootings, Walmart Responds To Calls To End Gun Sales

Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said the retailing giant will be “thoughtful and deliberate” as it responds to pressure to get out of the gun business after two mass shootings last weekend in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, claimed 31 lives and injured dozens of others.

The El Paso shooting, carried out Saturday by a gunman wielding an AK-47-style assault weapon, occurred in and outside of one of the company’s supercenter stores. Twenty-two people died in that attack. On July 30, two employees at a Southhaven, Mississippi, Walmart store were killed and a police officer was wounded by a disgruntled employee who had been fired.

“As it becomes clear that the shooting in El Paso was motivated by hate, we’re more resolved than ever to foster an inclusive environment where all people are valued and welcomed. Our store in El Paso is well known as a tight-knit community hub, where we serve customers from both sides of the border. I continue to be amazed at the strength and resilience we find in the diversity of communities where we live and work,” McMillon wrote Tuesday in a lengthy statement on his Instagram page.

McMillon said Walmart is “a learning organization, and we’ll work to understand the many important issues arising from El Paso and Southaven as well as those raised in the broader national discussion around gun violence. We’ll be thoughtful and deliberate in our responses, and will act in a way that reflects our best values and ideals, focused on the needs of our customers, associates and communities.”

Here is the full statement:

Shootings at the company’s stores include not only Saturday’s El Paso massacre and the July 30 attack at the Mississippi Walmart, but also a November 2017 rampage in which three Walmart customers were killed by a gunman in Colorado.

Walmart, the nation’s biggest retailer and largest private employer, hasn’t sold the kind of gun used in the El Paso shooting in years. In 2015, it stopped selling the type of gun used in Sunday's Dayton, Ohio, shooting that killed nine. Walmart raised the minimum age to buy a gun to 21 after the Parkland, Florida, school massacre in 2018.

Gun violence over the past two weeks — including a shooting at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in California on July 28 that killed three — has sparked increased criticism of Walmart over gun sales. The company said in a statement after Saturday’s mass shooting in El Paso that it was “in shock,” but many people on social media, including celebrities, said that as a major firearms seller, Walmart’s words were hollow and the retailer should stop selling guns.

Walmart does go beyond current federal laws regulating firearms sales and requires background checks before purchase, but Andrew Ross Sorkin, a columnist for The New York Times, wrote Monday in an open letter to the Walmart CEO that “in the depths of this crisis lies an opportunity: for you to help end this violence.”

“You, singularly, have a greater chance to use your role as the chief executive of the country’s largest retailer and largest seller of guns — with greater sway over the entire ecosystem that controls gun sales in the United States than any other individual in corporate America,” Sorkin wrote.

The El Paso shooting wasn’t the fault of McMillon, and the legally purchased guns used in El Paso and Dayton were not bought at Walmart, he wrote, but he added “it is your moral responsibility” to help end gun violence.

“ … Guns in America travel through a manufacturing and supply chain that relies on banks like Wells Fargo, software companies like Microsoft, and delivery and logistics giants like Federal Express and UPS. All of those companies, in turn, count Walmart as a crucial client.”

“Economists have a term for the kind of influence you wield: economic leverage.

“Walmart has used this leverage for years over its suppliers, partners, distributors, rivals — even cities and states.”

He went on to point out that other CEOs, including Marc Benioff of Salesforce, have pushed their companies to stop working with retailers that sell weapons, high-capacity ammunition magazines and accessories that increase the firing capacity of guns.

“The 22 people who died in your store this past weekend deserve more than words of consolation to their families,” the letter concluded. “They deserve a leader who is going to work to make sure it never happens again.”

Other companies have gotten out of the gun business, including Dick’s Sporting Goods, which banned assault weapons in 2018 and removed guns from stores earlier. Ed Stack, the company’s chief executive, was among four CEOs who signed a letter supporting the universal gun control bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives. He also joined Everytown For Gun Safety, a nonprofit founded by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg that advocates for gun control.

A study earlier this year concluded that reducing the availability of guns can reduce gun violence. The researchers concluded that states with more permissive gun laws and greater gun ownership had higher rates of mass shootings, and that a growing divide appears to be emerging between restrictive and permissive states.

The Associated Press contributed reporting.