Wal-mart quit selling "black" guns?

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There's definitely something going on. They are getting rid of a lot of the "tactical" sort of things...all the MFT and Blackhawk stuff, red dot sights, even a lot of the 556 ammo. I wouldn't get into the in foil hat arena on it just yet....in all reality I'm sure walmart is not the first place you stop by to buy a stock for your AR.

It's not just all the tactical type stuff in some stores either. A guy was telling me he bought 4 bolt guns that were marked down almost 50% off. A ruger american .308 for under $200 and 3 savages that were just over $200. They also had some stuff like hunting scopes marked down 50% too. Seems like they are thinning the herd on some of that stuff....I'm guessing it doesn't sell to well to begin with anyways. I did grab a trs25 with mount for $54 while I was there....don't know why I bought that but hey the price was right.
 
Was in my local WM a few days ago and passed by the gun counter. All of their "evil black rifles" are now on sale. As is typical of this place, there was no one anywhere near the sporting goods section to ask why.
 
Wal-mart quit selling "black" guns?
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I finally talked to the gun counter manager this morning at a Wal-Mart that I would not consider being subject to market pressures that would have them drop ARs. He confirmed that they will no longer sell ARs and were discounting specific accessories that went on them to clear space for other product lines. He said that they couldn't make sufficient margin on them now that prices had dropped and Corp had made the decision to discontinue selling tactical rifles and their direct accessories (stocks, grips, etc.). He opined that internet sales and competition from specialty retailers drove the decision.
 
Ugh. Saw a report on FB about a Wal-Mart a few hours south of me selling Bushmaster ARs for $250 per. To have disposable income.
 
herrwalther said:
Ugh. Saw a report on FB about a Wal-Mart a few hours south of me selling Bushmaster ARs for $250 per. To have disposable income.
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I might have to go check out my local walmart in a bit and see if they are doing discounts like that. I might borrow from the piggy bank if they are that price. :D
 
Tirod said:
If the price was right did you buy up all the discounted ammo? It will keep for 5-10 years.
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I think you're underselling that by a factor of 5-10.

Ammo has a shelf life that is longer than most of our lifetimes.
 
Where I live in SE Iowa there isn't any change. Only one or two AR's and a couple tacticool shotguns. Rest is rifles (which is funny cause you can't hunt rifle in Iowa) and hunting shotguns. Ammo selection is pretty good, though we don't have any 22LR. Still limited to 3 boxes a day and you can only buy 1 500 rnd (or more) box per day. Only store I've heard a company policy change to remove "tactical" rifles and shotguns was Dicks Sporting Goods. Guy I talked to last month in North Carolina said company policy kept them from stocking various semiautomatic rifles. He also said they'd be changing that here in a couple months though.
 
Walmart doesn't make a good profit on tactical rifles and accessories anyway. Its probably a financial move as someone stated.

Its fine with me; Walmart isn't the first place I think of when I want to buy to begin with.
 
I spoke with the Walmart sporting goods guy here yesterday. He said yes they were quitting selling "black rifles" and associated stuff. He said the reason was political. The recent spate of shootings was the driver.
 
I passed by the local walmart today, so stopped in to see if it was the same here as others have reported. Not a single AR in the case (although when I was there on Sunday there were at least 4 AR's in the case at regular price). I asked the sporting goods person (that has worked there many years) and he said they were all gone. He said that he sold the last bushmaster yesterday - price was $400. I asked about Wyndham AR's and he said they were gone before the markdowns took place. He didn't know of any of the walmarts in the area that still had any AR's in stock. Now if I wanted a hunting shotgun or some other rifle, then they had those in the case. One .22 rifle was marked down to $99.
 
I really don't care what kind of weapons WalMart sells as we are more likely to pay the little bit extra at Jerry's Gun Shop or Shogun. At the risk of a shameless plug, Mr Johns at Shogun isn't going to let a weapon leave his shop unless it is in A1+ condition and safe to operate. Since he has the skills and experience to make that judgment call the extra cost is reasonable. The sporting goods guy at WalMart... Is it really reasonable to buy a weapon from a person you wouldn't want on your firing range?
 
Saw a DPMS .223 a few weeks ago for $449 . Then a week later they had a bunch of non ebr's on sale including a Mossburg Maveric 12 gauge over and under for $299. Bought that one . The woman at the register said they were thinning things out for hunting season stuff.
 
I often buy powder, bullets, and once a RCBS reloading press at the Gaylord, MI Walmart. There are some variation in what walmart carries.
 
I saw a report on the news that WalMart is claiming they are not selling well and they are going to keep entry level priced firearms in stock. It may be true that they are not selling or it could be complete BS. IMHO I think they are playing politics on this one.
 
I always felt that Walmart was a poor fit with tactical or self-defense arms. Walmart was where I went for sporting ammo and to check on sporting guns like those that Sears, Penneys, Wards, Western Auto used to sell back before the GCA 1968. I did buy a CVA Bobcat .50 ML rifle, a Marlin (North Haven CT) 336W .30-30 rifle and a CBC 7022 .22 rifle (now Mossberg 702) at Walmart; my military guns came from dealers dedicated to that market.

Locally there are several Class III dealers with gun shops, including one I call a "cop shop" since they do a lot of law enforcement business. If I want a semi-auto military collectible original or military replica gun for club matches or for a self-defense gun, that's where I would go. Not Walmart.

I used to check at Walmart at the close of hunting season and buy black powder supplies at 1/2 or 1/3 regular price because that was the way they cleared the sporting goods shelves for the start of fishing/boating/camping seasons. (At the gun club muzzleloading rifle and black powder cartridges ran Mar thru Oct, but Walmart would not have BP supplies until ML hunting season late in the Fall. Plus when Uncle was alive, we'd all gather at the mountain Spring-Summer-Fall to ATV, BBQ and target practice out of hunting season.)

Whether Walmart is clearing the shelves of ARs to make space for hunting guns this Fall, or whether they are getting totally out of the modern sporting/self-defense market permanently remains to be seen. I just never saw them as the place to buy an AR. Friends or family interested in military collecting, match shooting, or using the AR as modern sporting rifle just didn't look to Walmart as their AR shop.
 
I actually don't doubt that they're discontinuing these lines based on sales instead of politics.

Wal-Mart uses a system of revenue per square foot of floor space to decide what products to carry, so there's two problems with the MSR market AND related accessories.

First: There's no profits to be made selling guns in general. If you make any money on your prices, you won't sell any. MSRs tend to be higher ticket items too that cost more to stock, so the profit margins are even more pathetic than other firearms.

Second: There's really no cheap Chinese sources for bulk quantities of AR accessories, so even if there's enough sales of blackhawk gun cases, slings, magpul P-Mags and the other associated items, they cost much more to stock, so I have no problem believing they make less money for the floor space than other things.
 
Out of 8 Walmarts in the Miami-Ft. Lauderdale metro area, where 5 million people live, only 2 of them sell long guns and they almost never have any black rifles. I should know, I purchased to long guns from them. They sell hundreads of Remington 870 and bolt action rifles. only a couple of times I managed to see a Bushmaster or a S&W 15-22.
 
Word just came out on the news that WalMart was not going to be selling anymore AR 15 style rifles.
Take it for what it's worth, the source is WOAI 1200 am San Antonio TX.
 
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