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Walmart gun safety score

Grade: A

Gun Safety Certified

As states across the country lift COVID-19 lockdown orders and businesses gradually open their doors to costumers, Walmart understands that it has a responsibility to keep its customers and employees safe and has adopted significant changes to help build safer communities with fewer guns.

Unfortunately, Walmart has experienced the consequences of our nation's loose gun laws first-hand. In August of 2019, a gunman inspired by hate shot and killed 22 people and injured 24 others at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas.

Following this tragedy, Walmart listened to its customers and employees and leaned into gun reform by ending all handgun sales, significantly limiting ammunition sales, asking customers to stop bringing firearms into their stores, and publicly lobbying for gun reform.

Thank Walmart for helping us build safer communities.

To: <ethics@wal-mart.com>

Subject: Walmart must act.

Dear Walmart,

Americans are grappling with the consequences of gun violence every day, yet the federal government has failed to pass legislation that would keep us safe. That’s why large American employers have a responsibility to their workers, customers, and communities to do everything they can to keep us safe from the estimated 393 million firearms in civilian hands.

Walmart, we want to thank you for prohibiting guns in your stores, ending the sale of all handguns, and certain kinds of ammunition, and for publicly calling for gun reform. As a result of these actions, your company has scored an A on the Gun Safety Scorecard at BusinessMustAct.org

Over 40,000 Americans lose their lives to guns every single year, including 12,000 people who are murdered with firearms -- most of them young Black and Latino men. Women, who represent the primary shoppers of American households, are also disproportionately impacted by gun violence. Five hundred and fifty-four American women are shot and killed by their intimate partners every single year, on average—a death every sixteen hours.

That is why we are so grateful that you’ve recognized that American corporations have an opportunity to lead in helping build safer communities for us all. And, we’re calling on you to go even further by investing in community-based violence intervention programs that are reducing rates of every-day gun violence and announcing that you will consider ending political donations to politicians who stand in the way of gun reform.

American businesses know that gun violence can also impact business. Research has found that surges in gun violence reduce the growth rate of new retail and service businesses and gun violence broadly imposes $229 billion in total annual costs on the United States – approximately 1.4 percent of GDP.

Since 72 percent of the public feels more favorably towards companies with CEOs that actively support gun safety laws, we are calling on you to act.

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The Business Must Act Coalition