Shot through the Heart: How the Wal-Mart decision affects Murfreesboro gun stores

 

By Zoë Haggard      

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Customers are met with a sign that reads, “We made a deal with Wal-Mart: we won’t sell underwear if you won’t sell ammo,” outside of Bullseye Gun, Gear, & Pawn.

 

Piles of paper strewn across mismatched furniture crowded the small gun store while an old window unit blew noisily. A train rattled by and shook the walls for several minutes.

 

The firearm business isn’t easy, according to Dave Trechet of Bam Customs. Any chance of increase in business is call for hope. 

 

So in the midst of the Wal-Mart decision to end short-barrel rifle ammunition and handgun sales, local gun stores are expecting a positive impact on their own sales. 

 

Wal-Mart made the decision in late August after a gunman with an AK-47 assault rifle shot and killed 22 people at an El Paso Wal-Mart earlier that month, according to a press release from The Ammons Law Firm.  

 

Even though the decision was made as a political move, the actual effectiveness in discouraging gun and ammunition sales is uncertain.  

 

“I’m beside myself about it [the decision] because it just doesn’t matter. It just appeases the base,” said Trechet, referring to those who are for stricter gun control.  

 

Trechet owns Bam Customs, which is located beside the railroad tracks off Old Salem Road in an industrial part of Murfreesboro.

 

He said he came to own the store eight years ago after his fabrication company in Fayetteville failed. Now, even though he has yet to experience any immediate results from the Wal-Mart decision with his current business, he remains optimistic. 

 

“But it’ll be interesting to see over the next few months if I just don’t get more business. If anything, I think there’ll be an increase,” he said as he sat in the small office of his store. 

           

“For all of us it’s good. Anytime you see anything like that happen you’re going to see an increase in sales. For me, stuff like that makes the firearm industry stronger,” he said.  

 

According to Trechet, gun stores like his own can stock up on ammunition and raise their prices. As a result, competition will increase among the individual stores.  

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Other gun store owners agree. Mark Cull of Nomad American Arms in Murfreesboro said Wal-Mart is just making a statement with their decision.  

 

Cull, who opened the store last February with his brother-in-law, designs and sells guns and ammunition in the store.  

 

He said he plans to see an increase in his business, especially now that the decision is in a controversial stage.  

 

“Most gun owners are in-tuned to politics so they’re going to be the ones who affect gun and ammunition sales when decisions like this come out,” said Cull.  

 

Where Cull does agree with Wal-Mart’s decision, however, is in the company’s discouragement of customers openly carrying their handguns in their stores.   

 

“I don’t think it’s a great idea to open carry. It scares people unnecessarily,” he said.  

 

But Cull is not against open carry. As a man who served eight years in Afghanistan as Special Operations after serving in the United States Air Force, Cull is for the individual right to protect oneself.   

 

“I honestly believe any gun control is not constitutional. Textually, when it comes to the Constitution, the First Amendment is first deliberately and the Second in second for a reason,” he said.  

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For Ken Lane, owner of Bullseye Gun, Gear, & Pawn, the Wal-Mart decision is “comical.”

 

Lane, who is now 70, has owned his store for only five years. Located behind the Regal Inn off Church Street, Lane and his family renovated the building from what it was previously (a paving business his wife’s family owned).

 

Now after those five years, the business has grown considerably, according to Lane.

 

“We opened up with 225 guns and now…we have about 2,000 guns,” he said. He lit a cigarette as he sat outside the front of his store and explained how he simply became interested in the firearm business after working at Kroger for 40 years.

 

He said one of the best parts of building his business has been the relationships developed with the customers—many of whom are regulars.

 

“Nobody ever comes into the door mad, at the gun the gun store. Everybody’s happy. It’s like going to the candy store,” he said with a chuckle. Even as he sat in the front, one of the store’s regulars came up and chatted with Lane about buying a trailer from a friend of his.

 

And the success of the business, both financially and socially, are expected to increase with the decrease in Wal-Mart gun and ammunition sales, according to Lane.

 

“We don’t make a profit off of selling guns,” Lane said with a chuckle. “We mostly make money on selling holsters and ammunition.”      

 

For Bullseye, Lane agreed that about 25 percent of their profit comes from ammunition sales. It’s a part of the gun business people don’t think about. And access to ammunition is a big necessity for gun owners.   

 

“People have really worn them [Wal-Mart] out about the decision—on just the ammo. Why don’t you stop selling beer because more people get killed by drunk drivers than they do guns?” said Lane.  

But as a gun store, Bullseye tries to do what they can.

 

“We try to go that extra step with them. Because we want people to be comfortable and competent and safe--don’t want anybody to get shot with one of our guns,” he said.

 

In general, firearm manufacturing has decreased from 11 million to eight million just between 2016 and 2017, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. The Murfreesboro gun store owners said it’s because sales are down because gun owners are not as fearful of losing their firearms while President Donald Trump is in office.  

 

The Wal-Mart decision is not the first political move made by a corporate company.

 

Each of the gun store owners mentioned how the Wal-Mart decision mimics the decision of Dick’s Sporting Goods from several years ago.

 

The decision to stop selling assault-style rifles as well as guns and ammunition to anyone under 20 years of age came after the massacre at Sandy Hook in 2012, and Dick’s sales have significantly decreased since then, according to a CBS News article.

 

Yet, any change in the current trends of gun violence is going to call for something more than decreasing firearm sales.

 

“We’re going to need a cultural change,” said Lane.

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