Alphecca

Our local Wal-Mart stopped selling firearms - however, they do still sell hunting licenses and ammunition. I'm sure one of the business calculations had to do with complying with ATF paperwork and hiring folks who could keep it straight.

I think the need to have a semi-dedicated salesperson handling firearms and ammo sales conflicts somewhat with Wal-Mart's low cost, self-service business model in the rest of the store. The issue is probably whether or not a particular store has enough firearms/ammo sales to justify the cost of that salesperson.

The both of you are right on. Jack.

My local Wal-mart stopped selling long guns but still sells pistol, rifle, and shotgun ammo. It's hard to beat those 9mm Value Packs.

It's Wal-Mart; it's a business decision. If they were making money at it, they'd continue. They're not, they don't. That's what Wal-Mart does, and they do it better than anyone else in retail.
As for not supporting them because they don't 'fully' support our sport...well, they never sold pistols or homeland defense rifles, and that hasn't stopped you from buying there so far. So that argument doesn't hold up. Bluntly: they never fully supported our sport.
I hope this trend will be good for local dealers. Without having to compete with Wal-Mart, perhaps the little guys will do a better volume and will be able to drop their ammo prices a bit. If they don't, there is always Ammunition Store, Midway, Graf & Sons, Ammoman, Natchez, Cheaper Than Dirt, etc...

Make your own ammo. I just ordered gear to do it for under $250 and ammo that costs me $20 a box will end up being $7.

That means I don't actually *save* any money, I just get to shoot 3 times as much.

Our WalMart in Louisiana has stopped selling firearms: at first it was just 'temporary' until they got the Katrina 'inventory shrinkage' worked out, but it seems to be permanent - the whole department and counter are gone. Ammo too, I presume. Fortunately there's Academy practically across the street.

The Bar-B-Que joint I had lunch at doesn't sell guns either. So should I stop eating there?

Walmart is making business, not political decisions so what is the beef? My wife works at a gunstore and has to do a lot of paperwork to sell guns. Walmart just isn't made for that kind of business as mentioned above.

The people we need to worry about are ATFE and local zoning commissions who keep new gunstores for opening to take the business Walmart abandons.

If anyone thinks that Walmarts decision to stop selling Firearms is purely motivated by the bottom line has not bothered to Google Walmart and Firearms.

Yah, business is business. But it is amusing to me that this happens now, since I am presently ensconced in the Holiday Inn in Concord to attend Liberty Fest starting tomorrow. I was talking to a rep for Gun owners of New Hampshire about the various differences between NJ and NH, NH laws, permits, private ranges, etc.

Oh well, no place is perfect.

Wal-Mart here in Alaska sells revolvers, if I recall correctly.

Or maybe that was Fred Meyer. I'll have to stop at both on my way to the range this weekend.

I have been told by a WalMart employee that once the warehouse stocks of guns are gone, no WalMart anywhere will be selling firearms. She didn't know if they would still be selling ammo.

I live in a very gun friendly area and the store near me has expanded its sports department but not in guns.

Don't know how accurate this will turn out to be, the employee did not know why they were doing it.

our local wal mart stopped selling firearms, redid the space, and now has more sporting goods overall and probably triple the amount and variety of ammo they had before (plus a real nice looking counter for ammo complete with a board to display your best catch)

I was upset when I heard about their plans, but fully support the implementation (at least at this one store) since they never did sell a lot of guns there (Galyan's was just down the road and was too tough to compete against) but they always moved a ton of ammo

I've never bought a firearm at Wally World but I have bought ammo several times (WWB) as well as a few of their nylon rifle bags. both are cheaper than the gun stores in the area. I try to stick with the gun stores for the firearms themselves and anything pistol related (holsters, JHPs and the like). I don't want Wal-Mart to put the gun stores out of business or even hurt their bussiness. If Wal-Mart's the only game in town...and they decide to quit playing... Well, your screwed.