The Walmart Effect: Testing Private Interventions to Reduce Gun Suicide

Abstract

After the Parkland massacre in 2018, some large retailers voluntarily restricted their own gun sales. Dick’s Sporting Goods has removed all guns from over 100 stores and pledged to remove them from hundreds more locations.1 Walmart has been especially pro-active in its efforts to responsibly market firearms over the past three decades — instituting a number of self-imposed restrictions, including a refusal to sell handguns, military assault rifles, high capacity magazines, and bump stocks, as well as videotaping firearm sales, “allowing only select associates who have passed a criminal background check to sell firearms,” and refusing to sell to people younger than 21 years old.

The question looms: can corporate policies reduce the toll of gun violence?

It is too early to empirically assess post-Parkland events, but there is a long history of corporate policy changes in gun sales. Despite all of its restrictions on firearms sales, Walmart is the largest gun retailer in the country.A1 In 1994, Walmart stopped selling handguns at all of its locations in every state except for Alaska. In 2006, Walmart stopped selling firearms altogether in more than half of its stores. As shown in Figure 1, the number of Walmart Federal Firearm Licensees (FFLs) dropped from 2,900 to less than 1,300 for several years before the company reversed course in 2011 and began increasing the number of stores selling rifles and shotguns.