Walmart pulls video game signs
In wake of El Paso shooting, company axes violent ads with no change to gun sales
As Walmart scrambles to respond to a shooting at a supercentre in El Paso, Texas, that killed 22 people last weekend, the retailer announced that it would remove video game displays and other signs or videos that show violence.
The move came as Republican leaders, including U.S. President Donald Trump and Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor of Texas, have drawn a link between deadly shootings and video games, despite researchers’ conclusions that there is no strong connection.
Walmart has also faced pressure from Democratic politicians and supporters of gun control to end or limit its sale of guns. But there has been no change to the retailer’s gun sales policy, said Randy Hargrove, a spokesperson for Walmart.
One Walmart manager, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared retaliation from the retailer, said in an interview, “It’s kind of funny that we can still sell firearms, but we can’t show pictures of a cartoon character holding a gun.”
The manager, who said that he had received the memo Wednesday and that advertisements for some of the store’s most popular games had been taken down, added, “I believe it’s a bad business strategy.”
Hargrove confirmed that the memo about violent signs, which was shared on social media this week, was a company-wide directive. “We’ve taken this action out of respect for the incidents of the past week, and it does not reflect a long-term change in our video game assortment,” he said. “We are focused on assisting our associates and their families, as well as supporting the community, as we continue a thoughtful and thorough review of our policies.”
The memo told staff to “review your store for any signing or displays that contain violent images or aggressive behaviour.”
It also said employees should make sure that “no movies depicting violence are playing in the electronics section” and that “any hunting season videos that may be playing in sporting goods” should be turned off.
“Turn off or unplug any video game display consoles that show a demo of violent games,” it added. “Cancel any events promoting combat style or third-person shooter games that may be scheduled in Electronics.”
Also this week, ESPN and ABC decided to postpone coverage of an invitational for players of “Apex Legends,” a battle royale style video game, at the X-Games in Minneapolis out of respect for the victims of recent shootings.
In a speech Monday, Trump said, “We must stop the glorification of violence in our society,” adding, “This includes the gruesome and grisly video games that are now commonplace.”
He joined a long list of politicians who have blamed video games for mass shootings. But there has been extensive research into whether a causal link between video games and violent behaviour exists, and it has yielded a broad agreement (though not a total consensus) that there is no strong evidence of a link.
“This idea that video games or movies or mental illness cause gun violence — there is no data that backs that up,” said Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. “Clearly the issue is easy access to guns, and we know that because that’s what the data and the research tells us.”
On Friday, at least four Democratic presidential candidates, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, called on Walmart to stop selling guns.
Investigators are treating the shooting in El Paso, in which 22 people were killed by a gunman who authorities say was a white man driven by xenophobia, as an act of domestic terrorism.
In a 2,300-word manifesto that appeared online minutes before the shooting, there is a reference to “Call of Duty,” a first-person shooter video game franchise. But anti-immigrant language is far more prominent in the hatefilled document, which said in the second line that the attack was “a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”