Following the mass shooting at a Walmart store in Chesapeake, Virginia, which left six dead and several others injured, on November 22 – just a couple of days before Thanksgiving – people are wondering whether the famous retail chain is going to ban the sale of guns. 

Walmart has more than 4,000 stores in the US. According to advocacy group Guns Down America, it has been the site of 363 gun-related incidents and 112 gun deaths since January 2020, the most infamous one in recent times taking place on August 3, 2019, when a 21-year-old white nationalist killed 23 people and injured dozens of others in a Walmart in El Paso, Texas.

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The gunman called it the “Hispanic invasion” in his alleged manifesto. It was the deadliest attack against Latinos in modern American history. Federal law enforcement has called it a domestic terror attack. The suspect faces state capital murder charges.

Even before the El Paso massacre took place, Walmart had placed restrictions on firearm sales. As retailers faced increased scrutiny in the wake of the growing number of mass shootings in the country, the company stopped selling AR-style firearms as well as handguns. It also raised the age limit to purchase a firearm from 18 to 21 years old. It also announced the requirement of the “green light” on background checks and for sales to be videotaped. 

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It also stopped selling barrel rifle ammunition that could be fitted on military-style weapons. “We believe these actions will reduce our market share of ammunition from around 20 percent to a range of approximately 6 to 9 percent,” Walmart’s chief executive Doug McMillon stated at the time.

The retail chain also discouraged customers from carrying firearms into its stores with so-called “open carry” laws. Now it remains to be seen if Walmart bans the sale of guns entirely following the Chesapeake shooting.

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According to the Gun Violence Archive, mass shootings in the United States have reached more than 600 in 2022, averaging more than one per day. This year, there has not been a single week without at least four mass shootings. 

Back in 2019, there were 417 mass shootings. The next year, it went up to 610, and the year after, the number rose to 700. Before 2019, mass shootings had not surpassed 400 annually, that is since 2014, from the time such shootings were tracked.