With tax-free weekend ahead, shoppers take stock in trips to Walmart
Blanca Santos clutched her 2year-old daughter, Emma, tightly as the Houston mother took her 9-year-old son, Welfren, back-toschool shopping at a northwest Houston Walmart.
With the El Paso mass shooting that killed 22 Walmart shoppers fresh in her mind, Santos thought twice about going shopping on Monday morning. But the 35-year-old mother ventured out anyway because she had to. School starts in three weeks, and her grade schooler needed new clothes and school supplies.
“We are scared, but we still need to buy things,” Santos said.
Houstonians, rattled by a pair of mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, that together killed 31 people over the weekend, went about their day more cautiously on Monday. Shoppers looked over their shoulders in parking lots and scanned for the nearest exits inside stores. Others made sure to conceal-carry their firearms.
Gabriela Reyes, 42, drove around the parking lot before heading inside a Walmart off U.S. Highway 290 with her 5-year-old daughter, Madelyn.
“I looked around for anything suspicious,” Reyes said. “If I saw something, I was going to leave real quick.”
Inside the Walmart, families milled about the back-to-school aisles while employees stocked shelves. Along one aisle were rows of clear backpacks — a requirement for students attending nearby Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District campuses in the wake of the mass shooting at a Parkland, Fla., high
school last year — selling for $9.88 each.
Shoppers clamored for retailers to install more security measures during the peak of back-toschool shopping, the secondbusiest retail season nationally. With Texas’ tax-free holiday coming Friday through Sunday, consumers are expected to descend on stores across the Houston area, looking to take advantage of no sales tax on clothing, school supplies and backpacks. The weekendlong tax break will shave as much as 8.25 percent in state and local sales taxes from consumer’s bills on a variety of goods.
Looking for security
Madeleine Garcia, 27, took her daughter Isabella, 9, and son Gianni, 5, back-to-school shopping at the Walmart on Monday to avoid the crowds this weekend. Garcia urged Walmart to install metal detectors and hire police officers to harden the stores from mass shooters.
If those measures failed, “I would take a bullet for my kids,” Garcia said, echoing the story of a young father and mother who were killed shielding their 2month-old child from the El Paso shooter.
Walmart officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Bentonville, Ark.-based company tweeted Saturday that the company was “in shock” over the mass shooting, adding: “We’re praying for the victims, the community & our associates, as well as the first responders. We’re working closely with law enforcement & will update as appropriate.”
Ira Williams, 42, brought his handgun with him as he stopped by the Woodforest Bank inside the Walmart. The Houston father of three, who has a conceal-carry firearm permit, said he didn’t want to go to the bank but needed cash to pay bills. Williams, who worked as a Target security guard for two years while he was in college, called on Walmart and other major retailers to hire local police officers to patrol store aisles.
“I would feel more protected if they had three or four police officers patrolling the store,” Williams said.
Shoppers also voiced opinions regarding various proposals for gun legislation, such as background checks, and urged retailers to do more to curb a spate of mass shootings that have struck schools, malls and places of worship. Walmart — the nation’s largest retailer and a major firearms seller — stopped selling assaultstyle rifles in 2015, and last year raised the minimum age to purchase firearms to 21 in the wake of the Parkland shooting. The retailer requires customers to pass a background check before purchasing a gun.
Reyes, the Houston mother, said Walmart shouldn’t be in the business of selling rifles and called for stricter background checks.
“AR-15s aren’t for any normal people,” she said. “Living in the city, we don’t need guns like that.”
Williams, the Houston father with a concealed-carry permit, agreed, saying assault rifles should be allowed only for police officers and the military. However, he said a total ban on firearm sales is not the answer to solving America’s gun violence.
“I don’t want to take people’s guns away, but AR-15s and AK-47s are not for normal citizens,” Williams said. “I’m for background checks. Congress needed to pass that like yesterday.”
‘An everyday thing now’
Yazmin Villarreal, 26, made her twice-weekly trip to Walmart to grab diapers for her sister’s baby and to pick up her prescription medication. Her husband, worried about mass shootings, had given her an electric stun gun and is now teaching her how to use a handgun, she said.
“Shootings are an everyday thing now,” Villarreal said. “You never know when it might happen.”