In a move by Wal-Mart to better target the needs of its communities, they have pulled gun sales from 11 of Maine’s 22 stores. What that essentially means, according to Wal-Mart, is they are going to stop selling guns in their stores where sales are not big enough to continue stocking the products, although they will continue to sell ammunition and other accessories.
According to the Boston Globe, these are the stores affected.
In Maine, Wal-Mart stopped selling guns this month at its stores in Houlton, Rockland, Scarborough, Skowhegan and Windham, in addition to the store in Biddeford, according to a survey by The Associated Press.
Other locations that stopped selling guns were Calais, Ellsworth, Falmouth, Oxford and Sanford. The Mexico store plans to stop selling guns once its existing inventory is sold, a store worker said.
Last April Wal-Mart announced it was going to stop selling guns in about 1,000 of its 3,000 stores nationwide. At this time Wal-Mart said the reason was for sluggish sales in some regions where guns aren’t of high demand.
What comes as a bit of surprise to some is that Maine, notorious for being a stronghold of hunters and loyal Wal-Mart shoppers, will lose half of its stores to gun sales.
I have a “politically incorrect” bit of a theory myself as to why Maine. I have always said that like it or not, Wal-Mart provides a service to a large sector of the public. We all too often conjure up images of hunters being those depicted in the latest catalog of Cabela’s or L.L. Beans. As many of us know, as much as we would like to buy our gear from the very best suppliers of the very best equipment, we can’t afford it. We end up at Wal-Mart shopping for the discounted merchandise that better fits our budget.
I consider myself as being a “typical” Maine hunter from a rural background solidly raised with a deer rifle in one hand and a fishing rod in the other. Surveys have concluded that the average hunter in the United States drops about $1,800 a year on hunting. Jokingly I have said that if that was the case, someone else must spend at least $3,595 each year because I only spend about 5 bucks.
Growing up a Maine boy who learned that shopping was places like Mammoth Mart, The Globe, Ames and other such discount department stores, you bought what you could afford. Here’s what my family hunted with.
My father had a Winchester Model 94, 4-shot saddle rifle he bought for $7.00 and a hair cut (he moonlighted from time to time barbering for people he knew). We had a single shot, 12-gauge shot gun given to us by a relative who refused to use it because they thought it unsafe. It may have been for bird hunting. If you raised the gun with the barrel pointing toward the sky too quickly, the barrel had been know to fall off. It worked fine for deer though. Some black friction tape helped hold the barrel and fore stock together.
Once I reached high school age and my three older brothers were sharing guns and taking turns, my Dad scrimped and saved and was able to buy a .303 British from a co-worker for $15.00. Are you getting the picture here?
We were taught never to shoot at a deer unless you knew you could drop it because we had limited ammunition and no money to replace it. Laugh if you would like to but this is the truth.
I believe that with each passing generation that level of poverty edges upward but things do have a certain amount of relativity to them. My point is, relatively speaking, there are still families out there that fit this description and will not even shop at Wal-Mart except for an occasional box of ammo, because they can’t afford to. That’s right.
Running a risk here of offending some people, the truth is Maine has more than its share of needy people who hunt for sustenance and fall far short of spending their share of $1,800 a year on hunting. From there you now have a certain percentage of the population that utilize the savings from Wal-Mart to afford their hunting gear and they will be the ones most affected by Wal-Mart’s decision to stop selling guns.
Those who can afford to will not shop for guns and ammo at Wal-Mart for several reasons, of which I won’t go into right now. I think the bottom line is that the division of wealth in Maine may not reflect the nationwide trend, therefore the surprising decision for Wal-Mart to stop selling guns in half of its Maine stores.
This is just a theory of mine and I imagine many of you will disagree and some will be angry at me for making such statements. But I think it is important to try to understand the dynamics of what comprises the Maine hunter and how that compares to hunters in other regions of the country. I would have to assume that Wal-Mart stores have done the same thing in rendering their decisions.
Wal-Mart has assured the NRA that their move to stop selling guns in selected stores is purely economics and is not anti-gun or politically motivated. The NRA has promised to watch what Wal-Mart does in the future with gun sales.
Tom Remington
