Walmart caves!

[.cheese.]

Walmart near me stopped carrying everything gun related about 8 months ago. No ammo, no cleaning supplies, nada.

They also discontinued most knife sales and only carried about 3 knives that were mixed into the fishing supplies.

I asked the manager and was told that they had permanently discontinued ammo sales.

I complained. I hoped others would too. 8 months later (must be within the last couple weeks as I was in there on the fifth of July around 3 AM) they have just put back up a nice sized ammo display. While it's not totally stocked yet, there are price tags for most of the ammo other Walmarts carry.

Looks like they caved to the complaints..... or decided discontinuing ammo was not in the best interest of profits.

 

[brighamr]

This is great news! Now if only you can get them to carry guns....

 

[kingpin008]

That's one of the things I LOVE about Wal-Mart. They do what they have to do to get your money. They try to do the PC thing and quit selling the guns & ammo and gear, and then BAM! They're knee-deep in letters and calls from gunnies who wonder when Wal-Mart decided they didn't like money anymore. Sure enough, all that ammo & all those guns come right back where they used to be.

I know there are a lot of folks who hate Wal-Mart here, but you gotta admit - they listen to their customers.

 

[Lucky]

I can see why people fear them, if they become a monopoly it'd be bad. But they are doing so by sound business practices (on our end). Selling cheap stuff to cheap people, seems reasonable and logical. People don't want to pay excessive union dues and wages in their prices (and indirectly gov't taxes, which said workers would have had to be paid to pay), so they buy stuff from China instead.

 

[Troutman]

Reaction from mom and pop gun-shops

 

[Feanaro]

They try to do the PC thing and quit selling the guns & ammo and gear

Wal-Mart has never quit selling ammo and gun gear where I live. I very much doubt Wal-Mart gives two twiddly winks worth of thought to the anti-gun movement but they pay very close attention to profit. The firearms, as I understand it, just weren't selling. If they stopped selling ammo in some places, it probably meant they weren't making a profit at it.

Reaction from mom and pop gun-shops
:crying:

Mom and pop gun-shops weren't killed by Wal-Mart carrying firearms and I haven't seen any pop up since they stopped. If Maw and Paw were relying on those two boxes of WWB and a .22LR brick to keep them afloat, the ship wasn't air-tight to begin with.

 

[kingpin008]

Mom and pop gun-shops weren't killed by Wal-Mart carrying firearms and I haven't seen any pop up since they stopped. If Maw and Paw were relying on those two boxes of WWB and a .22LR brick to keep them afloat, the ship wasn't air-tight to begin with.

+1. Business is business - If you can't compete, you find a way to compete or you sink. It's not the other shop's fault that they can out-price you.

 

[Lucky]

A way for smaller shops to succeed is to set up right near a Walmart, and then stock more specialty items. Let Walmart advertise and bring people in, then you skim off their customers.

The irony is that most of us will still be alive when the situation is reversed. India and China already have more smarter, harder-working people, per-capita, than most western countries. Kids in Elementary school in India already speak 2 or 3 languages, and every one of them can recite every country, it's capital, and political leaders, for instance. And afaik it's not 'cool' there to be stupid and lazy, yet. So before long it will be expensive to produce there, and us white-men countries will be teeming with uneducated, unskilled labour.

 

[Praetorius]

It was that damn Michael Moore and his Columbine movie that did it. I'm glad that political correctness has failed in this case.

 

[Creeping Incrementalism]

The irony is that most of us will still be alive when the situation is reversed. India and China already have more smarter, harder-working people, per-capita, than most western countries. Kids in Elementary school in India already speak 2 or 3 languages, and every one of them can recite every country, it's capital, and political leaders, for instance. And afaik it's not 'cool' there to be stupid and lazy, yet. So before long it will be expensive to produce there, and us white-men countries will be teeming with uneducated, unskilled labour.

 

[MP5]

I know there are a lot of folks who hate Wal-Mart here, but you gotta admit - they listen to their customers.

Except when you're actually in the store. You can walk by twenty of their employees without one acknowledging your presence.

 

[zeroskillz]

thats awesome. Wallmart is what I judge all ammo pricing by, and often have a hard time finding it cheaper wholseale.

 

[joab]

It was that damn Michael Moore and his Columbine movie that did it. I'm glad that political correctness has failed in this case.

No it wasn't it was a business decision
And BFC was five years ago

Walmart never stopped selling guns or ammo they simply put those items in stores where they sold and took them out of stores where they didn't
customer response and request has cause them to reevaluate their decision on this one store, hardly caving

If I were WalMart CEOs I would stop selling guns simply on the principle that we are a bunch of ingrates

First we claim that they cave when they stop selling guns at certain location and then they caved when they agreed to try it again

I got news for you
When all those that felt betrayed enough to contact corporate to get them to restock don't follow through then Wally will recognize it as so much hot air and stop selling ammo at that store again

 

[dawgtraxx]

I am not sure if I am shopping at the same Walmarts ya'll are..here in Texas.the ammo prices dont seem like such a good deal to me..maybe some of the WWB..but Academy seems to have better prices...and even Sportsmans warehouse has them beat..maybe it is just the Calibers that i shoot....figures

 

[ilbob]

WalMart did not "cave" They made a business decision to stop selling guns and ammo in the first place in some stores because they thought the floor space could be more economically used selling something else. Bringing back ammo sales just means they now think they were wrong about the ammo side of it.

This is what they are supposed to be doing.

 

[GunTech]

+1. Business is business - If you can't compete, you find a way to compete or you sink. It's not the other shop's fault that they can out-price you.

It pretty hard for a small shop to compete with a big box chain that can buy in bulk, and pays it's employees next to nothing. 40% of Wall-mart employees are on public assistance.

 

[Father Knows Best]

40% of Wall-mart employees are on public assistance.

Got a citation to back up that allegation?

Even if it's true, so what? At least *someone* is willing to give them jobs.

 

[meef]

I visited the Walmart Caves one summer vacation. Took the whole freakin' family.

Let me tell you, it was quite the experience. We still talk about it at family get togethers. Don't bring out the pictures though, that'd be going a bit far. You know that glazed look folks get in their eyes when you do that sort of thing.

And don't even get me started on the harrowing situation we found ourselves in on aisle 27! I still shudder to this day just thinking about it!

 

[hrgrisso]

Truth

I've heard the statistic about wal mart employees being on assistance, never have heard anything to back it up.

When I was in college about five yars ago, all the college kids worked there and those that didn't wanted to. Wal Mart started at 8 bucks an hour, everywhere else was still paying 5... Made sense to me to want to work there.

As to the competing thing, there was an article in Shooting Industry (or some such) a while back about a gun store in Florida that had a Wal Mart open across the street. Everyone cried and gnashed their teeth. The store owner, just smiled, changed his inventory and made a BUNDLE! Now there are three stores in the family chain and for the second two they sought out Wal Mart strip malls for business.

 

[trickyasafox]

Father Knows Best

there is a documentary out called the high cost of low price
its all about wal-mart. I don't know if its 40% but the documentary I think claimed that it is often more expensive for towns to have walmart in them because of the additional cost they incur on the state funded assistance programs.

don't quote me though i haven't watched that documentary in a couple years.

whenever i go to walmart, i always say the ammo is for a pistol. by me you have to show a pistol license if you say that, but i don't mind. an extra 10 seconds and it goes in the massive wal-mart database. I'll only buy guns from gun shops, but my 3 bulk packs a month of 22 from wally world aren't gonna kill my local shops. I want to get wal-mart to have guns again because i think they cater more to beginner shooters. I think shops do a better job, but the reality is it's easier to get people to try something new when its in a place they already go instead of taking a special trip.

 

[GunTech]

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/08/02_walmart.shtml

Yep, walmart is a great company. That explains all the lawsuits pending for things like forcing worker to work off the clock.

http://www.lieffcabraser.com/walmart lawsuit.htm

http://www.mindfully.org/Industry/2005/Wal-Mart-$172M-Lunch22dec05.htm

http://reclaimdemocracy.org/articles_2004/walmart_class_action_proceeds.html

http://www.lawcash.com/attorney/2943/wal-mart-lawsuit.asp

etc, etc, etc.

Great company.

 

[joab]

40% of Wall-mart employees are on public assistance.

40% must be a magic number, that is pretty close the number of military personnel that qualify for food stamps according to some long ago report I read when I was a young private, supporting a family driving a new car and eating steak every night with enough left over for some very good vacation time

Walmart here pays at or over the going rate

But I know people who will proudly do menial labor for minimum wage rather than take Walmart's $9 and hour because Wlamart doesn't pay enough

My next door neighbor works in the sun all day complaining about his measly 8.50 and hour but would never dream of working at the same Walmart his niece does making $10 an hour because he heard that Walmart doesn't pay well

Yeah I'm making fun of their stupidity

 

[Outlaws]

It pretty hard for a small shop to compete with a big box chain that can buy in bulk, and pays it's employees next to nothing. 40% of Wall-mart employees are on public assistance.

Around here the only thing Walmart is competing for is the sale of Rem 710's, Mini-14's, 10/22's, and a few lower end shotguns...plus .223, .22LR, 9mm, .45, and 12ga shells. Local gun shops have nothing to fear until Walmart has a fully stocked bar.

 

[GunTech]

The big box retailers (not just Walmart) have the advantage of being able to use loss leader. For example, music stores have been in decline for years no just because of online sales, but because large stores sell music at a loss in order to get shoppers in the door to buy other products. Some big chains do the same with guns. They sell gus at no profit, or at a loss, in order to bring in traffic for their other items. Since most people don't buy guns very often, but spend on ther items the store carries regularly, the stores can afford such a loss leader.

 

[GunTech]

Even if it's true, so what? At least *someone* is willing to give them jobs.

Good thing, since Walmart frequently runs other businesses into decline.