Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Great "About WalMart" article

I just read today's Outdoor Wire and in it is this article:

FEATURE
Walmart Never Was a Gun Store

A lot of folks are outraged at Walmart discontinuing the sale of ARs and now certain kinds of ammunition. I guess they feel like this monster corporation has betrayed them, and that we should boycott or punish them for not supporting the Second Amendment. Well, um, we should have never started buying our gun stuff there in the first place. We abandoned real gun stores for convenience, and to save a couple dollars. Gun stores went out of business, and here we are.

I could care less. In fact, it would not bother me if Walmart stopped selling guns and gun and hunting related accessories all together. They’ve never been a real gun/hunting store anyway. Though I’m sure there are exceptions, those behind the counter are, in most cases, not qualified to sale or even handle a gun, and I doubt any of them know the difference between a caliber and a cartridge. And based on my experience; their enthusiasm for customer care almost equals my interest in cat videos.

When I was growing up there was a local bait & tackle/gun shop about two miles from my house. On weekends—during my paper route—I’d stop there on my bike. The guy behind the counter would let me look at and fondle the guns that interested me, and he even knew a thing or two about firearms…and young boys. I could usually talk him out of some part I needed, that was just lying in the clutter on his workbench. (If you grew up near my hometown—and are older than 50—you will remember Ray’s Bait Shop. I’d rather go back there for one hour than spend a day in Cabela’s.)

We’ve seen the death of the local gun shop. With that, we’ve lost places where real and practical knowledge could be dispensed. Walmart has contributed to this near extinction; they retail firearms so cheap the local guy cannot compete. (Few realize how small profit margins are on guns.) What they fail to deliver is service—service before, during, and most importantly, after the sale. And those conducting the sale do not have the experience to get that feeling when someone is trying to buy a gun with possible bad intentions in mind. (You do realize an FFL dealer can deny a sale to anyone they think might be a danger, don’t you? Local gun shop owners take this seriously.)

And then there’s the knowledge they do not have to share. Local gun shops are operated by folks who are experienced with, and passionate about, what they do and the things they sale. That passion carries over to the customer. The absence of that passion is like a cancer to the gun and hunting industry. It’s why Walmart could care less about your firearms or hunting interests—they have none of their own. It’s also the reason some gun manufactures are struggling; they hired management types from other industries who lack our passion.

Be mad at Walmart if you like, I could care less what they sale. When I buy gun stuff I’m going to buy it from a guy who smells like Hoppe’s #9, a guy who was installing a trigger on a rifle that morning, a guy who closed his shop early yesterday to go to the range, a guy who frequently has a shop full of like-minded folks bitching about anti-gunners, a guy who knows what a pre-64 model 70 is, who Jeff Cooper was, and who actually gives a [bleep] if I hit what I shoot at, or ever come back in his shop again.

With this help from Walmart the local gun shop can once again be real. With all the new gun owners in our ranks, they’ve never been needed more than right now!

You think Walmart is a gun store? Well, bless your heart. You’ve never been in a real gun store, have you?

Excellent point of view. I agree.

The best gun store I have found in my area is the front of an auto garage. In between oil changes or welding a muffler, he'll sell you an AR at a decent price.

But to me the issue isn't that Wal-Mart is a schitty gun store, its that Wal-Mart, the largest retailer in America has taken a stand against 2A.

My local wal-mart has had nice guns for sale but ones that no enthusiast really wants to buy. A .17 Ruger American, A Henry 45 lever action, A Marlin 22, A savage Axis 7mm, they might have the occasional Marlin 30/30 and a handful of Mossberg or Remington Pumps, maybe one bolt action in camo that is a 223 or 308, but by and large its a generic starter set of guns.

I usually buy ammo in bulk because I can't stomach handing a $20 bill over for 20 rounds of anything.

The Walmarts in the Twin City area look like you were transported to Mogadishu.

This ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Slam Walmart all you want, but during the 22 ammo shortages, they were the only store that didn't jack up the prices to obscene level. Gun stores have thier place, but for those of us on a budget, Walmart was a great place to buy guns and ammo.

It's how they remember 9-11.

Yes! "When some people did something".

Well, SOB, you're right.

I wonder if old man Walton was living then. He might have discouraged gouging.

Nothing wrong with gouging. When things get stupid like they did with .22 ammo, gouging serves to lessen demand and end the shortage by reaching an equilibrium between demand and price point. The shortage might actually have been a lot shorter if Wal-Mart had raised its prices enough to discourage all the neck beards who bought their ammo and resold it for actual market prices.

Yeah, those "wonderful mom and pop" ass holes were first in-line sucking Walmart cock when there was any .22 ammo available. Their bitch asses would send their whole trailer park family down there, even granny in a wheelchair to get the 3-box minimin for $2.37 then haul it back to Bubba's Bait n Overpriced Boat Gas shop and sell it to schmucks for $7 a box.

Agree with the article too.. But when they cave to anti-gunners just because of politics, they lose me... I won't spend another DIME in a Walmart..

Very good article, and very true.
I've seen more than my share of local shops go under simply because the big stores (not just Wal Mart) sold stuff at cost in order to drive out the competition. I can think of three where I knew the guys personally.
And it's spot on regarding the passion and experience passed over gun shop counters as well. Many times I've seen it and received some help and advice myself.
Now I'll admit there's been occasions where I'd buy ammo at these big stores, but it was usually I stopped for something unrelated and saw a price too good to pass up. Say I stop to get oil and a filter for the truck. As I said, I hand load for all my rifles, but if I see loaded shells for the price of unprimed brass....
7mm

My little town - the 1960’s now — had its own version of Ray’s Bait Shop. In fact he was a barber who sold guns, mostly used ones, on the side and tinkered with fishing reels on his bench through the back door. In addition he wrote a column in the weekly paper, giving fishing reports from around the area.

I remember him fondly because I was a kid whom he let look at the guns, hold ‘em a bit, whose questions he would patiently answer. On Sunday afternoons, he would stroll by my house with a .22 to the pastures just on the east edge of town to shoot ground squirrels. Those pastures I also wondered on are now a golf course.

Thank you Mr. Hollinga.

Walmart? Matters not to me. It’s not an enterprise I would depend on for anything firearms related. However, that’s not the whole issue. It’s the trajectory of the corporate, mental climate in regard to guns in this nation and the virtue-signaling that does not one thing to stem gun violence.

It’s all pageantry. Emotion is the best seller of goods known to man and quite predictable.

I agree to a point but what many people fail to realize is that just because a business is small or family owned or (insert cliche here) doesn't mean they were or are good. To an incident the worst customer service I've ever been dealt has been at small businesses.

I grew up in a small town. Our local gun store was very expensive, had very limited inventory, and the owner was a blow hard prick. I was glad when they closed. I live in a smaller town now...experience has been much the same. Just last week I stopped at a gunsmith a couple towns away to pick up two rifles they promised me would be done in 3 weeks. After 5 weeks they hadn't been touched.

Small does not equal good any more than big equals bad.


With that said a good gun store or gunsmith is an absolute joy and something to be celebrated and supported. Just like a good mechanic

This is the main reason I have not set foot in a Walmart for over 20 years...

I don't remember but a very, very few privately owned, small dedicated retail gun stores around my general area back in the days before Walmart, and the ones there were didn't keep many new firearms in stock, therefore had to order most new guns at time of sale.

Big national catalogue stores that also sold new guns via mail order and in-store like Sears, Montgomery Wards, Western Auto, etc., were the primary competitors of small mom & pop gun shops long before Walmart ever was.

There are simply too many privately owned retail gun shops that survived and still thriving in spite of competition from Walmart to lay the blame for failed 'old time' gun stores on Walmart. (Walmart could special order just about any catalogued brand name production new gun they didn't carry in stock per customer request, too.)

The very few small gun stores that were around my general area simply closed their doors as the owners got too old and retired or died, and either had no heirs that wanted to take over or no buyers.

As always, YMMV.

I would like to travel to this mystical universe where awesome LGS are.

And to the poster that his gunsmith sat on his FAT ASS for 5 weeks and rendered zero services...I seen buds wait a year for work to be done.
I also had a friend's 75 yr old dad drop a savage 99 off with a """"gunsmith"""" and that dumb son of bitch lost the rifle, or sold it to someone else, he didn't really have a good answer.

Complete imbecillery