DETROIT – Walmart announced Wednesday that it will no longer sell firearms and ammunition to people younger than 21 and would also remove items resembling assault-style rifles from its website.
Walmart said its decision came after the company reviewed its firearm sales policy in light of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, which killed 17 people.
The teenage gunman used an AR-15 rifle. Walmart said it takes "seriously our obligation to be a responsible seller of firearms" and also emphasized its background of "serving sportsmen and hunters."
Several major corporations, including MetLife, Hertz and Delta Air Lines, have cut ties with the NRA since the Florida tragedy, but none were retailers that sold guns. The NRA has pushed back aggressively against calls for raising age limits for buying guns or restricting the sale of assault-style weapons.
Walmart Inc. stopped selling AR-15 guns and other semi-automatic weapons in 2015. It doesn't sell bump stocks, the accessory attached to a semi-automatic gun that makes it easier to fire rounds faster. It also doesn't sell large-capacity magazines, and says it doesn't sell handguns, except in Alaska.
In announcing the change in policy, the company said it had processes in place to make sure it was applied for online sales.
Dick's Sporting Goods will stop selling assault-style rifles
Dick's Sporting Goods, the nation's largest sporting goods retailer, will stop selling assault-style weapons like the one used in the Parkland, Florida, high school shooting.
The company said it will also raise the minimum age for all gun sales to 21. Dick's (DKS) will not sell high-capacity magazines that allow shooters to fire far more rounds than traditional weapons without reloading, as well as other accessories used with weapons similar to the AR-15.
The Parkland shooter, Nikolas Cruz, bought a gun at Dick's. The company said he did not buy the AR-15 that he used in the school shooting there.
The company stopped selling those military-style semiautomatic weapons in its Dick's-branded stores after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012, but it continued to sell those weapons at its 35 Field and Stream stores.
Now it will pull those weapons from all of its stores.