Walmart removes violent signs
Move comes after Republicans link video games, shootings despite contrary evidence; Democrats call on chain to stop selling guns
As Walmart scrambles to respond to a shooting at a supercenter in El Paso that killed 22 people last weekend, the retailer announced it would remove video game displays and other signs or videos that show violence.
The move came as Republican leaders, including President Donald Trump and Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor of Texas, have drawn a link between deadly shootings and video games, despite researchers’ conclusions 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 spokesman 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 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 the memo about violent signs, which was shared on social media this week, was a companywide 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 employees to “review your store for any signing or displays that contain violent images or aggressive behavior.”
It also said employees should make sure “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 behavior 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. “Clearly, the issue is easy access to guns, and we know that because that’s what the data and the research tells us.”
Patrick Markey, a psychology professor at Villanova University who focuses on video games, found in his research that men who commit severe acts of violence actually play violent video games less than the average male. About 20 percent were interested in violent video games, compared with 70 percent of the general population, he explained in his 2017 book “Moral Combat: Why the War on Violent Video Games Is Wrong.”
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.
“Companies that sell guns have a responsibility to the safety of their communities. @Walmart is one of the largest gun retailers in the world. The weapons they sell are killing their own customers and employees. No profit is worth those lives. Do the right thing — stop selling guns,” Warren tweeted.
Federal 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 hate-filled document, which said in the second line that the attack was “a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”
Less than a day after the massacre, another shooting in Dayton, Ohio, killed nine people.
At a Walmart in Southaven, Miss., last month, an alleged disgruntled former employee killed two supervisors in an attack that ended in a shootout with police in the parking lot.
And Thursday, a man with a loaded rifle and 100 rounds of ammunition walked into a Walmart in Missouri, alarming shoppers before he was detained by an armed off-duty firefighter and arrested by police, according to authorities.
“We will work to understand the many important issues that arise from El Paso and Southaven, as well as those that have been raised in the broader national discussion around gun violence,” Doug McMillon, Walmart’s chief executive, said in a statement on Facebook on Tuesday.
“We will be thoughtful and deliberate in our responses, and we will act in a way that reflects the best values and ideals of our company,” he added.
Walmart does not provide breakout data on the profits or revenues that come directly from weapons or video games, Hargrove said.
Walmart does not sell military-style weapons similar to the AK-47-style rifle used by the gunman in El Paso or the AR-15s used in other mass shootings. It offers hunting rifles and shotguns at about half of its 4,000 supercenters and handguns only in Alaska.
Two weeks after the deadly school shooting in Parkland, Fla., in 2018, the company announced it would not sell guns to anyone under 21.