
 
 
 
 When Adam Lanza entered Sandy Hook Elementary School on Friday, December 14, inexplicably bent on ending as many lives as possible, he was carrying a Bushmaster AR-15 assault rifle and several high-capacity magazines. Sadly, this isn’t the first time the country has had to deal with the aftermath of a horrific shooting spree, nor is it the first time we’ve encountered an AR-15 in this context: only days earlier, it was the weapon of choice for a shooting at an Oregon mall that killed two people. Five months earlier, it was used by James Holmes in an attack that wounded fifty-eight people and killed twelve in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater. And several years before that, a man and his teenage accomplice used a Bushmaster AR-15 to terrorize the Washington, DC, area with a series of random shootings. 
 
 Although it is not yet clear where the Bushmaster AR-15 used by Lanza (and registered to his mother) was purchased, the model is familiar to many Walmart shoppers. It’s on sale at about 1,700 Walmart stores nationwide, though the retail chain pulled the weapon from its website three days after the attack. While the deadly rampage in Connecticut has finally and unmistakably highlighted the madness of making such weapons readily available, it’s a concern that many people with a Walmart in their community have been trying to address for years. Several months back, the Rev. Greg Brown had a troubling conversation with two members of his youth group from the northwest side of South Bend, Indiana. “They were honor roll students and little young folks that love the Lord,” Brown recounted. “One of the kids came up to me and said, ‘Rev, you ain’t gonna believe what happened the other day at Walmart.’” The kids went on to describe how, on a recent visit to the big-box store, a man asked them to fill up a gym bag with ammunition and sneak it out of the store for him. They declined. 
 
 Walmart’s ammunition sales have troubled Brown since at least 2009, when two teenagers shoplifted bullets from the local Walmart, shot at an employee who tried to stop them in the parking lot, and then embarked on a citywide robbery spree in which one man was seriously injured. When Brown headed down to the store to see how easy it would be to steal ammunition, he was shocked. Not only were there bullets arrayed on the unlocked shelves; there were rows of guns as well, including assault rifles. 
 
 South Bend has the most violent crime per capita in Indiana and well more than double the national median. Brown was outraged that Walmart was even selling these weapons, let alone that they were unlocked and under the supervision of hourly employees without specific training in firearm handling and sales. (Brown says a former Marine handles the gun sales at a nearby Dick’s Sporting Goods.) “It’s totally wrong, and it’s totally unacceptable,” he said. “You look back there and see a dad holding a gun, his son pulling on his pocket. And the son knows the gun is going home. The son’s going to know where the gun is.” 
 
 South Bend isn’t the only place where Walmart is stocking guns, including combat-style weapons and gun-related paraphernalia. The big-box chain at one point sold guns in only about a third of its stores, mainly in remote rural areas where hunting is popular. But in 2011, without much fanfare, Walmart expanded gun sales to about half of its 3,982 stores nationwide, including those in more urban areas like Albuquerque and Spokane. 
 
 The expansion of gun sales at Walmart came after a five-year slowdown. In 2006, the chain announced that it was rolling back gun sales, citing declining profit margins on the relatively expensive weapons, which even at Walmart can retail for hundreds of dollars. But in 2011, company executives were looking at eight straight quarters of declining sales at stores open for a year or more—the worst slump in Walmart’s history. 
 
 They must also have noticed that Barack Obama’s inauguration had sparked a rally in gun sales, which have steadily increased every year since 2008. The government isn’t allowed to track firearm sales, but the FBI does release figures on how many retailers ask it to run background checks—a relatively reliable indicator of total gun sales, although likely a lowball estimate, since a person can buy multiple guns on a single background check, and many gun shows aren’t required to perform such checks. In 2007, retailers asked the FBI for just over 11 million background checks; by the end of 2009, 14 million checks were requested—a 27 percent increase. 
 
 In April 2011, Walmart began stocking guns in more and more stores, expanding the sales to 1,750 outlets nationwide. By the end of that year, the FBI received 16.4 million background check requests; the number is 16.8 million this year. Overall Walmart sales figures are back on track after the 2011 slump, and executive vice president Duncan Mac Naughton told shareholders at a meeting in October 2012 that gun sales in particular are a staple of the chain’s strategy to continue boosting its numbers. He said that over the past twenty-six months, gun sales at Walmart stores open for a year or more were up an astonishing 76 percent, while ammunition sales were up 30 percent. Walmart is now the biggest seller of firearms and ammunition in America. 
 
 “This gun thing, it’s really just a nightmare,” says Bertha Lewis, president of the Black Institute, which has been organizing Walmart workers this year to protest wages and working conditions. Given its aggressive gun sales, Walmart’s logo “shouldn’t be a smiley face; it should be an automatic weapon,” she adds. 
 
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 Nearly 400 guns are available in Walmart’s catalog. And even if your local store doesn’t sell a particular model, you can special-order it (assuming you pay half the cost ahead of time). With the exception of its stores in Alaska, Walmart doesn’t sell handguns, though it does sell ammunition for them, along with a wide variety of semi-automatic long-barrel weapons. For example, at half the Walmarts in America, you can buy a semiautomatic Colt M4 Ops .22 rifle; it carries a thirty-round magazine, which you can also purchase in the store. Or perhaps a Sig Sauer M400 assault rifle, advertised on Walmart’s website as “designed for use in law enforcement, military operations…as well as competitive shooting,” which is just one of several AR-15 assault rifles for sale. 
 
 In keeping with the store’s pitch as a one-stop destination for shoppers, with everything from gas to groceries, gun enthusiasts can also obtain a wide range of gun accessories—including the 360 types of ammunition listed on Walmart’s website. You can buy a 555-pack of Winchester hollow-point bullets, which the website advertises as “great for plinking and varmints,” but which would cause extensive damage should they enter a human body and expand, as they are designed to do. There are full clips of ammunition for assault rifles, including “quiet ammo” that makes only a quarter of the noise of regular bullets. Laser-pointing sights for handguns are also available, as well as belts for holding shotgun shells (only $4.97 at select stores). 
 
 Walmart, which declined to comment for this story, has said elsewhere that its stores will always respect local laws and ordinances on gun sales. But in 2005, Walmart was busted by Bill Lockyer, then the California attorney general, for thousands of state gun law violations—including selling to people that the AG’s office had notified Walmart were prohibited from owning firearms; delivering guns to customers before they passed a background check; and sometimes even failing to ascertain a customer’s identity. The company settled the suit for $14.5 million. 
 
 And, of course, Walmart has contributed to efforts to change state gun laws and make the possession and use of firearms even easier. It was one of the key backers of the American Legislative Exchange Council when the group aggressively pushed “stand your ground” laws in states across the country. (Walmart has since dropped out of ALEC under public pressure.) 
 
 In 2008, the store reached an agreement with Mayors Against Illegal Guns to adopt tough new standards for sales above the federal requirements for gun retailers. But even if every regulation is adhered to, the mass sale of weapons and ammunition will undoubtedly contribute to this country’s horrifying gun violence problem. 
 
 In fact, Walmart is increasingly popping up in court documents. In 2011, on the morning that he killed six people, including a federal judge, and injured thirteen others, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords, Jared Lee Loughner went to two Walmarts in Tucson in search of ammunition. He was turned away at one store for “strange behavior,” according to police, but got what he was looking for at the next Walmart. (“We share in the sadness for those people whose lives were ended too soon,” the store said in a statement at the time.) 
 
 In November, a disturbed 20-year-old in Missouri was arrested for planning mass shootings at a screening of the new Twilight movie and at the local Walmart—the latter because he could reload there. “He decided that he would go and shoot people at Walmart in Bolivar,” according to the court documents. “He would walk into the store and just start shooting people at random and if he ran out of ammunition…he would just break the glass where the ammunition is being stored and get some more and keep on shooting until police arrived.” 
 
 Local news reports are rife with stories of gun thefts at Walmart stores, often apparently because of lax oversight of the weapons inventory. In October, a man and a woman cracked open a display case at a Walmart store in Tyler, Texas, “while a clerk wasn’t looking,” according to local reports, and stole four assault rifles. The two have yet to be apprehended. 
 
 A week earlier, at a Walmart in Missoula County, Montana, a clerk was showing a Sig Sauer semiautomatic rifle to a man who then “grabbed it and ran for the store’s entrance,” according to the charging documents. The police nabbed him a short time later, after he had tossed the AR-15 from his car. In early November, police in Summerville, South Carolina, were on the lookout for suspects in incidents at two separate Walmarts, where display cases had been smashed with a hammer and the AR-15s and other assault rifles inside them stolen. And these are just a few of the incidents involving guns or ammunition at Walmart in the past two months. Since the start of 2012, there have been at least fifty shootings in a Walmart store or parking lot, incidents tracked on a blog called Walmart Shootings (walmartshootings.blogspot.com). 
 
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 The possibility that South Bend could end up on that list once again is what has the Reverend Brown so alarmed. For forty-eight years, he has lived with his mother, Bertha, a retired schoolteacher, in a house less than a mile from a Walmart. The neighborhood is a rough one, and he’s seen it get worse; Brown said that the locals sometimes call it Babylon, “because ain’t nothing righteous.” 
 
 Bertha, who has lived in South Bend for sixty-five years, says the violence is the worst she’s ever seen. “It’s real sad, because we’ve got a lot of young people, and people are getting killed—every time you look, someone is getting shot,” she says. “Every time you pick up the paper…. I don’t know who’s doing it, and they can’t seem to catch these people, but the guns are out there.” 
 
 For four months last summer, Reverend Brown’s prayer group, nicknamed the God Squad, walked around town sticking three strips of tape (symbolizing the Father, Son and Holy Spirit) with anti-violence messages onto telephone poles. The group was “praying that we could cease the violence, cease the drama. And it worked in some areas,” Brown said. “But I’m going to be honest with you: we’re at an all-time high.” 
 
 So when he saw the weapons for sale at Walmart, Brown took action. He called the chief of police and members of the City Council, who in turn applied pressure on local Walmart managers. In response, the chain promised the city in writing, in June, that it would no longer sell assault weapons in South Bend. 
 
 Brown thought the problem was solved. Then, this past fall, his phone rang: “I had a parent call me and say, ‘Mr. Brown, they’re selling them.’” He went back to Walmart, and indeed, the weapons were still on display—without much in the way of security. “I saw the glass unsecured,” Brown said. “The employee who worked there said, ‘I only work part-time back here.’ He opened the glass…. This guy left the cabinet open and walked away.” 
 
 This time, Brown came prepared: he’d brought a police officer and a reporter for the local ABC station with him. They took pictures, and the reporter did a story that made waves in South Bend. Walmart apologized and promised to fix the error. 
 
 A month later, Brown said he’d heard from a police officer that the combat-style weapons were being sold inside the packed store on Black Friday. He said he’ll keep up the fight and plans to visit the City Council again to ask for tougher action. “I’m not against guns; I’m not trying to go against the NRA,” Brown said. “But I’m against the way they sell them. You can go in Walmart at 3:30 in the morning and you can’t buy a can of beer. But you can walk in there to the ammunition [counter] and buy as many boxes as you want. I have a problem with that.” 
 
 Other anti-violence activists are disturbed by Walmart’s ballyhooed expansion into urban markets like Chicago, Washington, Los Angeles, Reno, Detroit and other cities. That, combined with the increased gun sales, could be a recipe for disaster. 
 
 The chain says it won’t sell guns at those stores—a condition of approval for a new Walmart in Washington, DC—but Bertha Lewis is wary. Even if that turns out to be true, the guns are likely to be sold at a Walmart somewhere else in the area. “Guns are a scourge in black and brown and low- and moderate-income communities,” Lewis said. “And here comes Walmart with Mr. Smiley Face: ‘Here, here’s a $5 sweater—and, oh, by the way, you can get this gun.’” 
 
 Lewis thinks the gun sales will soon be a new front in the activist campaign against Walmart. “You’re going to see it more and more and more as folks organize against Walmart,” she said. “One of their vulnerabilities is their stance on guns. Don’t try to sell me an apple and a gun at the same time. Don’t tell me that you’re trying to give fresh fruit and vegetables to people so that they can have a healthy life, and then you turn around and on the next counter you have instruments of death.” 
 
 Also in this issue, the editors say nothing like the Newtown massacre ever needs to happen again and Katherine S. Newman examines “The Roots of a Rampage.” ||||| A sporting goods chain says it's suspending sales of modern rifles nationwide because of the school shooting in Connecticut. 
 
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 Cars are parked in the lot outside the Dicks Sporting Goods store in Cranberry, Pa. on Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2012. The sporting goods chain says it's suspending sales of modern rifles nationwide because of... (Associated Press) 
 
 Cars are parked in the lot outside the Dicks Sporting Goods store in Cranberry, Pa. on Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2012. The sporting goods chain says it's suspending sales of modern rifles nationwide because of... (Associated Press) 
 
 Dick's Sporting Goods also says it's removing all guns from display at its store closest to Newtown, where the massacre took place. 
 
 Authorities say a gunman killed 26 people, mostly children, with a military-style rifle at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Friday after killing his mother. He then killed himself. 
 
 A statement posted on Dick's website expresses sympathy for the victims' families. It says sales of modern sporting rifles will be suspended during "this time of national mourning." 
 
 Dick's declined to answer Associated Press questions about how long the suspension would last or which weapons were being pulled. 
 
 Pittsburgh-based Dick's Sporting Goods Inc. has more than 500 stores in 44 states. ||||| Straight Talk 
 
 The Daily Beast asked readers whether or not they own guns—and if so, why. More than a thousand people have weighed in so far. The results might surprise you, writes Matthew DeLuca. 
 
 In the wake of a horrific school shooting in Newtown, Conn., lawmakers and activists have come forward to demand a serious discussion about gun control in America. The National Rifle Association has been silent, while the president has said we have an “obligation” to try to prevent another massacre at the hands of a crazed gunman. 
 
 But who actually owns guns in America—and why? Surely, they can’t all be Adam Lanzas. 
 
 To find out, we asked our readers a simple question: Why do you own a gun? And if you don’t own a gun, why not? 
 
 Almost immediately, the answers came pouring in. As of Tuesday evening, more than a thousand people had submitted answers—nearly 600 who own guns, and the rest who don’t. The anonymity of the Internet and Twitter character counts do not always lend themselves to thoughtfulness and insight, but many readers seemed eager to put hyperbole and political expediency aside. 
 
 Some offerings were misguided attempts at humor—from both sides of the fence. Others were downright puerile. Many of the responses we received, however, were both civil and illuminating. The gun owners were not radical fantasists intent on the violent overthrow of the government. The non-gun owners did not wave the bloody shirt. Taken together, they represent the kind of conversation about gun ownership that responsible Americans should be having—both on the public airwaves and in their living rooms. 
 
 Among the gun owners, some common threads emerged. Readers from rural areas said that they own guns for practical concerns, like personal safety in homes located far from law enforcement, or as a necessary tool for their livelihoods. 
 
 “We target shoot. We live in a rural area with livestock,” LP from Colorado said. “We have to be able to defend ourselves from aggressive wildlife, put an animal out of its misery if it is severely injured, and defend ourselves in our isolated environment. People are responsible with their guns here.” 
 
 A respondent from New Mexico said he or she owns a “.22 pistol to shoot rattlesnakes only in my yard.” 
 
 Hunters, not surprisingly, represented a good number of gun owners who responded to our survey. “I grew up in a family that hunted and fished,” said Jeff from Minnesota. “However, I do believe that private ownership of semi-automatic and automatic guns and handguns should be totally prohibited. I am perfectly willing to give up all of my guns for the greater good.” 
 
 A third group of gun owners was made up of hobbyists. An anonymous reader from Minnesota wrote that he or she owns a gun “because the hunting and shooting culture I grew up in taught me to respect life, my elders, and firearms. The relationship between me and my father that developed out of firearms and hunting is incredibly meaningful and the most positive one in my life.” 
 
 “It’s a family heirloom,” Regina from Maine said of the gun she owns. “It’s a breech-loading deer shotgun that was passed from my grandfather to my dad to me.” 
 
 In a number of cases, readers who owned guns said that they also support more stringent restrictions on the ease with which people can purchase firearms. “I enjoy shooting,” wrote a respondent from Colorado. “Mine are kept locked and disassembled. Ammunition is kept separately. I grew up with firearms but support much tighter controls on firearms.” 
 
 “I want to be prepared to defend my family and home,” wrote Scott from Alabama. “However, access to guns through shows must be prohibited, and more extensive background checks with longer waiting periods seems a good step in the right direction. Elimination of all high capacity mags should also be strongly considered.” 
 
 In the same way that many readers who own guns were willing to explore the idea of new and more effective restrictions on gun ownership, readers who said they do not have guns often framed their decision as a personal one. Guns may work for other people, they said, but they are certainly not for everyone. 
 
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 “Shooting sports are fun, and legitimate,” Andy from Texas wrote of why he chooses not to own a gun. “But the anxieties of the self-defense crowd are just too much for me. I refuse to believe there are that many bogeymen in the world.” 
 
 “I don’t need one today, but would want the option to buy one if I change my mind. I could agree with special, renewable permits/licenses and required annual safety training for owners,” wrote one anonymous reader. 
 
 Other respondents wrote that they see no need to put the fearsome power of a firearm in the hands of civilians, outside of controlled circumstances like hunting. Christina from California wrote that “the purpose of a gun is to kill someone or something. God is the judge of people’s actions, not me. You don’t need an assault weapon to kill a deer or pheasant. If your life feels threatened, you are in the wrong place.” 
 
 “I have curious kids,” wrote Matt from Maryland in a post that summed up many respondents’ feelings about the unreliable hands even a legally purchased weapon might fall in to. “I might lose my job or my wife and have a nervous breakdown.” 
 
 The readers who responded to The Daily Beast’s question are undoubtedly an imperfect sampling of Americans. There are reasons to suspect, however, that the impression they give of a country not divided into gun nuts and bleeding-heart liberals is accurate. Conservative Democratic congressmen, including lifelong NRA member Senator Joe Manchin, have shown interest in taking on gun laws after Newtown. While both President Obama and Mitt Romney for the most part stayed away from talking about restrictions on guns during their presidential campaigns, Americans have never stopped debating the issue. The great majority of NRA members support restrictions on gun ownership for domestic-violence offenders, as well as criminal background checks on all gun buyers. ||||| Joe Raedle/Getty Images 
 
 With President Barack Obama endorsing sweeping gun restrictions in the wake of the school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, prices for handgun magazines are surging on EBay (EBAY) and semi-automatic rifles are sold out at many Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) locations. 
 
 Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, said yesterday that it would continue to sell guns, including rifles like the one used at Newtown, where 26 people, most of them children, were killed on Dec. 14. By contrast, Dick’s Sporting Goods Inc. (DKS) suspended sales of similar guns at its more than 500 stores. 
 
 Searches of five kinds of semi-automatic rifles on Wal- Mart’s website showed them to be out of stock at stores in five states, including Pennsylvania, Kansas and Alabama. Wal-Mart doesn’t sell guns online, instead asking customers to input a zip code to see if their local store carries a specific weapon. 
 
 “We remain dedicated to the safe and responsible sale of firearms in areas of the country where they are sold,” David Tovar, a spokesman for Wal-Mart, said yesterday. He didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on this story. 
 
 Wal-Mart has about 10 modern sporting rifles, the gun industry’s term for firearms that look like an M-16 military rifle, listed on its website. The retailer removed a description and picture of the Bushmaster AR-15, which was the model used in Newtown, after the shootings. 
 
 In 2006, Wal-Mart reduced the number and variety of guns it offered in stores, and replaced them with more upscale products such as exercise equipment. It then reintroduced firearms to many stores in April 2011 as part of strategy to add merchandise back to shelves and revive sales growth at its Wal-Mart locations in the U.S. 
 
 Gun Revenue 
 
 The move may have helped as U.S. Wal-Mart stores posted their first gain in same-store sales in more than two years in October 2011. Wal-Mart doesn’t disclose how many guns it sells, though at an analysts’ meeting in October it said gun revenue gained 76 percent in the first half of this fiscal year. The chain advertised a Sig Sauer M400 as one of its Black Friday doorbusters last month, offering the rifle for $50 off at $867. 
 
 Cabela’s Inc. (CAB), an outdoor retailer that also sells guns, didn’t return several calls seeking comment on whether it planned to change its firearm policies. Hunting equipment, which includes firearms, made up 41 percent of Cabela’s sales in 2011, according to a company filing. The retailer doesn’t provide sales data for just guns. 
 
 Prices Tripling 
 
 On EBay Inc.'s auction website, shoppers have recently bid up gun magazines. The current bid for four Glock handgun magazines, ammunition for one of the guns used at Newtown, is $118.37 compared with $45 on the day before the shooting. The bid for seven Glock magazines hit $201 on Dec. 17 from $71.01 before the massacre. 
 
 Gun buyers have flooded other firearms retailers too. The Hyatt Gun Shop in Charlotte, North Carolina, racked up more than $1 million in sales yesterday for the best single-day performance since the store opened in 1959, according to Justin Anderson, director of online sales. At the top of shoppers’ lists was the Bushmaster AR-15, the model of rifle used at Newtown that sells for as much as $4,000 and had almost sold out, he said. 
 
 Revenue at one of the largest U.S. gun stores surpassed even the spike just after Obama was elected president in 2008, Anderson said in a telephone interview. Sales weren’t as robust when Obama was re-elected last month because the president hadn’t backed major new gun laws, he said. 
 
 ‘Concrete Proposals’ 
 
 Today, Obama said his administration would come up with “concrete proposals” by next month to curb gun violence. 
 
 Speculation over stricter gun laws will continue to boost sales, Anderson said yesterday. 
 
 “It’s kind of the perfect storm for the gun industry,” he said. “When these things happen, even though it’s sad, it does pick up sales.” 
 
 Wal-Mart has received some pressure to curb gun sales in the past. That continued this week when Lauren Buglino, a fourth-grade teacher from the Bronx, created an online petition on Change.org exhorting the retailer to stop selling rifles like the one used at Newtown. It had more than 57,000 supporters today. 
 
 Wal-Mart entered into an agreement in 2008 with the Mayors Against Illegal Guns that included video recording of purchases and the use of databases to identify people who have bought guns recovered in crimes. 
 
 When Wal-Mart added guns to stores in 2011, Mayor Thomas Menino of Boston criticized it for trying to increase the number of guns on the streets, according to the Boston Herald. 
 
 Menino and Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York founded Mayors Against Illegal Guns. The mayor is founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP. 
 
 To contact the reporter on this story: Matt Townsend in New York at mtownsend9@bloomberg.net 
 
 To contact the editor responsible for this story: Robin Ajello at rajello@bloomberg.net
– The decision by Dick's Sporting Goods to suspend sales of "modern sporting rifles"—industry vernacular for weapons similar to M-16s—might be paying off for Walmart. Bloomberg reports that the semi-automatic weapons are out of stock at many Walmarts across the country, including those in Pennsylvania, Kansas, and Alabama. Walmart sells about 10 types of the rifles, though it removed a description and photo of the Bushmaster AR-15—the gun used at Sandy Hook Elementary—from its online store after the shootings. Guns are big money-makers at Walmart, but the chain doesn't disclose exact numbers. (One of its Black Friday sales was $50 off a Sig Sauer M400, putting it at $867.) In addition to the surging gun sales, Bloomberg says prices of handgun magazines are rising quickly on eBay. Four Glock magazines were going for $118 today, up from $45 the day before the shooting. Shooter Adam Lanza had a Glock with him, too. Two related stories: The Daily Beast is collecting responses to a simple query: "Why do you own a gun? And if you don’t own a gun, why not?" It's turning out to be an interesting forum for both sides. The Nation has a piece headlined "How Walmart Helped Make Newtown Shooter's AR-15 the Most Popular Assault Weapon in America."