Do your big-box stores treat you like a baby?

[AlongCameJones]

If you buy a new gun at Academy in Oklahoma, a store employee has to carry the boxed gun in their hands out the door from the gun bar. If you bring the gun back for any reason, they have to escort you from the door to the gun bar. Walmart used to do the same thing back in the 1990's when I bought two new guns there then. I bought a new Ruger American ranch 5.56 NATO rifle not long ago and I had to bring it to Academy for factory warranty repair shipping and handling last two months and just got it back home tonight. The bolt operation was very sticky. Rounds difficult to chamber and extract. I got the baby escort treatment at Academy.

Big retail corporations have screwy notions about guns and gun owners.

No mom-and-pop gun store I know of escorts people in and out with guns like kids. I generally like dealing with a LGS for firearms transactions anyway. Mom-and-pops are generally more friendly.

[Ignition Override]

None of my guns came from big box stores.

Having bought all of mine via Armslist (about a dozen), and the others shipped to gun shop FFLs, that treatment would be a bit insulting.

Corporate attorneys and the lowest-common denominator must be the reason.

Remember the video of the LEO who was handed a gun after Zero safety check by the clerk or the LEO , followed by the officer putting his finger tip over the muzzle and shooting the gun?
Other customers easily could have been hit by the ricochet.
Maybe this event was a factor.

[JohnKSa]

WalMart is the only place I've been escorted out with a gun. I haven't bought a gun from Academy in years, but the last one I can recall they didn't do a walk out with it. Just handed it to me.

I can't remember if the WalMart manager told me this when he was walking me out with last gun I bought there (many years ago) or if I heard it somewhere else, but the reason was supposedly to prevent someone from buying a gun, loading it up and using it to commit some sort of crime right there on the spot.

Apparently they didn't care if you took it to your car, loaded it up there and brought it back in...

[AlongCameJones]

My first gun bought ever was a Remington Nylon 66 .22 in 1988 at a Big Five in California. $100 new with a cheesy Tasco scope I could never get zeroed. There was no NICS checks then, just an old-fashioned DROS paper. The clerk handed me the boxed gun and I walked out of the store. The child-like escort service in my experience first started in 1996 at a CA Walmart when I purchased two new long guns there. A young woman store worker with a crabby-looking face wheeled my guns from the gun counter all the way out to the tailgate of my Ford truck in a shopping wagon. This little cookie had "anti-gunner" written all over her snotty little face.

It was about the Clinton administration that a lot of corporate America started to get goofy ideas about guns.

[stagpanther]

Walmart where I live still escorts you out the door with a purchased weapon--though allows concealed/open carry for customers. Haven't figured that one out but I suspect it has something to do with a scam prevention of some sort.

[AlongCameJones]

Maybe they are worried about somebody shoplifting a gun.

[Aguila Blanca]

Many years ago I purchased a BB gun (rifle -- Daisy clone of a Winchester lever action saddle gun) at a Walmart, and even for a BB gun the clerk from sporting goods had to escort me to the exit door.

[Hawg]

I haven't bought a gun from a big box store since 2013. That was Walmart and they escorted me out with it. I haven't bought one from them since.

[Schlitz 45]

I know my wife recently bought an inexpensive 410 at Walmart & told me she was escorted so that policy is still enforced.
I've bought a couple of guns at Scheels and they seem to make it a real ordeal, I felt like I was buying a new truck at the dealership it took so long & has made me look elsewhere for places that have a more enjoyable purchasing experience (I still like Scheels)

[FITASC]

Bought a Savage on clearance last year at Wally World and they walked me out. Day before a guy bought a dozen rifles and they walked him as well - just corporate policy.

[gaseousclay]

I purchased a firearm from Scheels last summer and they brought it out for me. My local pawn shop doesn’t do this because they’re a tiny hole in the wall and it’s unnecessary. At Scheels the gun department is on the 2nd fl and where I paid for my firearm. I think it’s good policy to escort customers out with paid merchandise (gun), if it’s a big box store. It has nothing to do with treating customers like babies and everything to do with deterring theft of dangerous firearms. My local pawn shop might only deal with a few customers at a time and know I purchased my gun, whereas, Scheels has hundreds of customers walking around

[AlongCameJones]

Firearms aren't dangerous...some people are. I guess it's a security issue in big stores.

Big stores and big businesses have government bureaucracy mindedness. I hate it at Walmarts when they ask to see my receipt at the door too. They don't do that in ordinary regional chain supermarkets. Some big-box electronic store chains really act like its airport security when the customer leaves the store with something. It makes the shopping experience seem less friendly when store employees act like TSO agents. This probably makes online shopping seem like an attractive alternative these days.

[gaseousclay]

You’re under no obligation to show a receipt at Walmart for goods purchased

[jmr40]

It's not so much government bureaucracy as protection from lawsuits. If something goes wrong in your local mom and pop store, or if a gun gets into the hands of someone who shouldn't have it, no one is going to sue because there is no money to get even if you win. At least not enough for a lawyer to take the case.

Big box stores have deep pockets and lawyers know it. If Walmart sells a gun and something goes wrong it will cost Walmart $$$$MILLIONS just to win the case. They usually settle out of court.

All of those nanny steps may do nothing to prevent something from going wrong. But when it goes to court they can document all of the steps they took to prevent problems. It will greatly reduce their financial liability.

It is a PITA, but I don't blame them, nor will I let that prevent me from buying a gun from a store just because they do such things.

[44 AMP]

You’re under no obligation to show a receipt at Walmart for goods purchased

OK, then how do you proove you bought it?

[rickyrick]

When I still purchased new firearms and pistols, academy consistently had the lowest prices.

I don’t care about being walked to the front of the store, I most likely won’t need the gun while in the store.

[gaseousclay]

OK, then how do you proove you bought it?

https://youtu.be/jAJ981Ay9ec

[AlongCameJones]

Rickyrick, the LGS's do cost more for guns but they treat you nicer as a customer. The LGS is more firearms-knowledgeable and may be able to, but not always, get special guns you want from their own distributors that the big box might not be able to do. They will also have a bigger selection of new guns and a selection of used and preowned guns as well. I was looking at a 'new' Ruger rifle at the Academy gun bar one time and it was all scratched up off the rack. If you buy a new gun from an LGS, they may also assist you with shipping and handling for warranty repairs in a helpful fashion. There is one LGS in Lawton, however, that doesn't play the middleman or service center for warranty claims. The man there told me that his customers of new gun sales would deal directly with the gun maker and normally ship the guns themselves via the Fed Ex store in town. I have used this LGS for a number of FFL transfers on mail-order guns from third parties. Normally if you buy a new Ford truck from a Ford dealer, you bring it back there for warranty work. The gun trade doesn't operate exactly like the car trade. It would be nice if they did.


YGWYPF is what I've concluded.

[Mike38]

I got escorted out of a Walmart (one of the few that sell guns) a few years ago with a new shotgun. Little did they know, I had a legally carried .38 Spcl revolver in my pocket. How does that make sense?

[shafter]

They treat people like babies because so many of them are. It's just not worth it to have someone do something stupid. That really doesn't bother me. What does bother me is when there is a lock on the gun and they won't even take it off for me to try the action. That's a deal breaker.

[AlongCameJones]

In Oklahoma, we have had Constitutional Carry since November 2019. I may now carry a concealed handgun into Walmart or Academy sans police-issued permit. This is the way it should be all over America. The right to carry concealed, or even open, is covered under "the Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms shall not be infringed".

BEAR in that clause means CARRY on or about one's person. Requiring paid conceal-carry permits to exercise one's right under the 2nd A is treating this 2nd A right as a taxed privilege.

[Double Naught Spy]

In Oklahoma, we have had Constitutional Carry since November 2019. I may now carry a concealed handgun into Walmart or Academy sans police-issued permit. This is the way it should be all over America. The right to carry concealed, or even open, is covered under "the Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms shall not be infringed".

BEAR in that clause means CARRY on or about one's person. Requiring paid conceal-carry permits to exercise one's right under the 2nd A is treating this 2nd A right as a taxed privilege.

You do realize that the 2nd Amendment keeps the government from restricting your right to bear arms. It does nothing to stop private property owners from restricting your right to bear arms. By most legal definitions, you are a guest in those stores. You aren't on a public street. You only have the "right" to carry that way in Walmart or Academy so long as they allow it. They aren't the government. You may have "Contsitutional Carry" since November 2019, but as per Oklahoma statute, Okla. Stat. tit. 21, § 1290.22, any person, property owner, tenant, employer, or business entity can prohibit people from carrying concealed or unconcealed firearms on their property.

[Colorado Redneck]

There was a thread here in the Firing Line a few years ago about people going to shooting ranges, renting a firearm and shooting themselves. It's inconceivable to most of us that some people do things like that. Our local gunshop, the gun sales person carries your newly purchased firearm to the front door. It isn't insulting to me one little teeny bit. It's store policy. Why turn a molehill into a mountain? I could care less about that.

[AlongCameJones]

Double Naught Spy

Acknowledged. The private property owner does not have to honor the gun rights of guest individuals under the 2nd A. Arguably, the several states and their respective jurisdictions do, though. Some states, however, are to some extent, limiting the private property owner's right to ban firearms on premises. Texas doesn't allow landlords to ban firearms in tenants' rental homes. GOOD! Some jurisdictions protect the free exercise of people to keep guns in their locked cars in the parking lots of their employers while at work. Private premise holders may someday wise up to the possibility that no-gun policies may draw mass shooters to their premises as steel to a magnet.

I would even favor any legislation, if ever enacted, that gives employees in any vocation the right to be armed, perhaps by concealed carry, at the workplace. I don't feel I should have to be made unarmed and defenseless by employer policy in order to work for a living. Some people carry armed at workplaces with risk to being fired if found out. They figure their life and limb is more valuable than their job security.

Walmart evidentially doesn't want the bad reputation of having their in-store customers get killed by armed criminals and armed loonies on CNN and Fox News without the means to shoot back. And I agree with their concealed-gun-allowing policy.

[Carl the Floor Walker]

This same old post came up a few years ago. Seemed some people felt they were unjustly targeted. What nonsense. It is a simple policy and so easy to comply with. And so easy to understand why the Store would have certain safe protocol when dealing with the Public and selling of firearms not to mention the fact that we all know they have "Insurance Policies". Heck, I got walked out when I bought a Pellet rifle. NO BIG DEAL!
If a person is offended by such a simple policy then simply do not buy from there.
I give points to the stores that DO sell firearms. And there is way too much animosity toward big box stores and their employees that sell firearms. If the big box stores keep getting complaints of people that are "Offended" then they might just say the heck with it and just not sell them. I would not doubt it, if in this age of insanity that they may have even had attempts of law suites by People that were "Offended".

Gun rights these days has become downright tough. Always reminds me of the song "Stuck in the Middle with you.
Stuck in the Middle with you,Don't know what I'm gonna do.
Liberals to the left of me
Clowns to the right
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8StG4fFWHqg