From the Boston Globe:
As fearful residents rush to stock up on guns, Wal-Mart, one of the region's biggest suppliers, abruptly stopped selling them at 40 stores scattered throughout the Gulf Coast.The move infuriated some Wal-Mart customers in this fiercely progun region, some of whom said the big chain left them without protection as the violence increased after Hurricane Katrina.
... One mother came in to buy her first gun after she and her two children, ages 9 and 12, witnessed a slaying on the streets of New Orleans, said Scott Roe, Spillway's owner.''Her comment was, 'I was a card-carrying, antigun liberal -- not anymore,' " Roe said. ''She said, 'I'm going back home, and I am not going back unarmed.' "
A Wal-Mart spokeswoman, Karen Burk, attributed the company's decision to pull guns from the shelves to ''some very fluid circumstances and changing situations" in the region. She did not elaborate far beyond that. ''We're trying to take care of our customers and community and be a responsible retailer at the same time," Burk said.
In addition to its decision to stop gun sales at 40 stores, Wal-Mart also has placed severe restrictions on gun sales at some other stores in the area. Executives ordered the guns removed from their glass display cases and put into a vault instead. At those stores, customers who want to purchase a gun must select it through a catalog.
Burk said the retailer has no date set to return guns to the stores.
It strikes me as an odd time and place to make this decision.
Posted by TheEclecticEconoclast on September, 11 2005 at 07:37 PM
