Walmart to stop handgun ammo sales

Walmart announced Tuesday that it will discontinue the sale of handgun ammunition and also publicly requested that customers refrain from openly carrying firearms in stores even where state laws allow it. The announcement comes just days after a mass shoo

The store also has publicly requested that customers refrain from openly carrying firearms in stores.

What it means

The nation’s largest retailer will stop selling short-barrel and handgun ammunition, including .223 caliber and 5.56 caliber used in military style weapons, after it runs out of its current inventory. It will also discontinue handgun

sales in Alaska, marking its complete exit from handguns.

Walmart is further requesting that customers refrain from openly carrying firearms at its stores unless they are law enforcement officers.

Why now?

Walmart has been facing increasing pressure to change

its gun policies by gun control activists, employees and poli

ticians since a gunman killed 22 people at one of its stores in El Paso in early August and a second unrelated shooting hours later in Dayton,

Ohio that killed nine people. A few days before that, two Walmart workers were killed by another worker at a store in Southaven, Mississippi.

Previously

Last month, Walmart ordered workers to remove

video game signs and displays that depict violence from stores nationwide.

Walmart announced in February 2018 that it would no longer sell firearms and ammunition to people younger than 21 and also removed items resembling assault-style rifles from its website.

In 2015, Walmart stopped selling semi-automatic weapons. The retailer also doesn’t sell large-capacity magazines or bump stocks. In the mid-1990s, Walmart stopped selling handguns with the exception of Alaska.