Wal-Mart, the largest chain retailer in the United States, announced on the 29th that it had removed samples of firearms and ammunition from American stores because of “civil riots” in some areas of the country.
Walmart stated: “We have seen some isolated civil riots (incidents). As we have done many times in the past few years, we have removed firearms and ammunition from the sales area as a preventive measure to ensure the safety of employees and customers.”
According to Wal-Mart, customers can still apply for purchase just by removing samples of firearms and ammunition from the shelves. Wal-Mart sells guns and ammunition in about half of its stores in the United States, mostly in areas where hunting is popular.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, caused two consecutive nights of protests and riots when the police shot and killed Walter Wallace, an African-American man. A curfew was imposed from 21:00 on the 28th to 6:00 on the 29th. Wallace has a history of mental illness.
This year, many African-American residents died in police enforcement in the United States, triggering large-scale protests across the country.
Brenna Taylor, a young woman in Louisville, Kentucky, was shot and killed by police in her home in March. George Floyd, a middle-aged Minnesota man, died in May after being kneeled by a white policeman on his neck for nearly 9 minutes. Wal-Mart then removed samples of the store’s bullets.
Wal-Mart’s US stores stopped selling ammunition that can be used for short-barreled rifles and pistols last year, and asked customers not to carry firearms publicly in the store, even if the state’s law allows it.
Wal-Mart also stopped selling pistols in Alaska. Wal-Mart began to stop selling pistols nationwide in the mid-1990s. In recent years, only Alaska stores are still selling them.
