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People Have the Power, Not Walmart CEO Doug McMillon
Anyone who values the Constitution, let alone gun ownership and the right to effective self-defense, will immediately punish Walmart, shifting all purchases to:
- Dollar stores
- Grocery stores
- Hardware stores
- Auto part stores
- …
- Even Amazon. Yes, Amazon is also hostile, but this is allying with Soviet Russia to crush Nazi Germany.
We cannot afford to wait and see if “Walmart’s virtue signal” in its announcement that it will “stop selling ‘short-barrel rifle ammunition,'” will somehow organically, cosmically balance out in our favor. Things can and will get much worse unless Walmart is made an example of, for all corporations that depend on normal Americans’ dollars for their business success.
We have no power over Amazon, Apple, or Google. If the left can even hijack Walmart against the bitter clingers, against women with handguns for self-defense, then soft tyranny is our near future. As the NRA finally realized in the last presidential election cycle, the Second Amendment is not going to stand or fall alone. Rather, it is part of a larger set of issues with common enemies. The same crew after your guns also explains “shut up,” until they invent governmental and quasi-governmental tools to compel you to affirm them and denounce what they want denounced. Starbucks is not vulnerable to push-back, to any cultural counter-attack. Walmart is. This is the most likely chance to effectively fight back.
The Walmart CEO tipped his hand in a published internal memo. He is eliminating handguns and handgun ammunition as a category that a socially responsible business would carry. He is doing the same with the most popular self-defense long-gun ammunition 5.56/.223). He is using his position to push a new “assault weapon” ban. He privileges people feeling “unsafe” when they merely see a gun. The icing on the cake is the total gun-grabber tell of professing respect for the tradition of hunting and outdoor sports with supposedly traditional rifles and shotguns. He could have got that from Joe Biden.
Walmart is vulnerable. They are desperately trying not to go the way of Sears. Their customers can crush their current corporatist leftist CEO, Doug McMillon, who has allied himself with the New York Times, and quickly force a turn back to Americanism. The rule is simple: no shopping, and no allowing people who shop there to bring Walmart bags or house brand stuff to your dwelling, your office, your picnic.
African-Americans won with this technique in the 1955-1956 Montgomery bus boycott. They won by ruthlessly self-policing. It is disempowering nonsense to assert that boycotts are ineffective. They simply take real grass-roots will, with a bit of organizing direction. It is no answer to say the issues are different or that the level of contemporary oppression differ greatly. Such objections seek to divert from the study of an effective campaign, dropping us back into the business-as-usual of slowly losing rear-guard actions.
I say it is worth showing respect by studying success. It took a whole year to win local bus desegregation. It cost every man and woman in the boycott hours of lost time, outside of work, each day. In a day before cheap sneakers, it cost shoe leather and physical discomfort added on top of already hard physical existences. How do you get people to hang together, when any one person abstaining, choosing to rest their tired feet for an hour, would seem not to matter so much? It was a classic collective action problem.
Now, we can say that everyone felt a sense of community, and we can say the same for labor unions in the early days. But, it is still human nature to free-ride. So, behind the sense of community, you must have effective social sanctions. Can such sanctions work across the heartland, when there are so many stores? I believe people still have the power.
The only boycott exception, where legal, might be to get in the CEO’s face with open carry. Carry politely, legally, openly. Then, expecting confrontation by employees, have a partner obviously employing a cell phone or GoPro camera to capture everything. This is fraught with risk, so should be carefully managed in a larger campaign, not free-lanced. It truly is public street theater.
People do not normally carry long arms on their persons while in town. By contrast, many carry pistols. If there was a public theater act, it should most certainly be part of a messaging campaign. Any long gun should be visibly safed, no magazine, and the action open. Such acts would challenge the real position of the current Walmart CEO, with a “hunting” rifle, bolt-action or lever-action. The actors would best be “people of color,” women, or sexual minorities. The scripted messaging would be about real “safety” for vulnerable communities.
The Starbucks case is instructive. People started having constitutional carry meet-ups to celebrate Starbucks being a coffee shop that permitted open carry. Gun control groups reacted. Because the gun-grabbers made open carry an issue, Starbucks then took what is now the Walmart position, with an open letter on open carry from CEO Howard Schultz:
Recently, however, we’ve seen the “open carry” debate become increasingly uncivil and, in some cases, even threatening. Pro-gun activists have used our stores as a political stage for media events misleadingly called “Starbucks Appreciation Days” that disingenuously portray Starbucks as a champion of “open carry.” To be clear: we do not want these events in our stores. Some anti-gun activists have also played a role in ratcheting up the rhetoric and friction, including soliciting and confronting our customers and partners.
For these reasons, today we are respectfully requesting that customers no longer bring firearms into our stores or outdoor seating areas—even in states where “open carry” is permitted—unless they are authorized law enforcement personnel.
In response, a gun-grabber showed the rest of the left’s hand:
“We think that this is not just a huge win for American moms who are realizing their voices matter in gun reform, but also this is a sea change for gun culture in general,” founder Shannon Watts told Co.Exist. “You have a worldwide business icon saying after decades it’s no longer acceptable to bring guns in his stores. This is just the beginning of making guns in stores just as distasteful as smoking and drunk driving.”
Gradual pressure by individuals will be lost in the noise of other economic and business signals. A sharp, large drop in both floor traffic and online sales, corresponding with increased sales for corporate rivals, is needed to shock the corporate board into removing the gun-grabber CEO (no handguns, no self-defense long-guns, guns as objects of public fear and shame, “hunting” offered as cover and as the old gun community wedge issue).
Effectively, immediately, socially shame anyone who slacks off and goes to Walmart. This can and should be polite, educating friends and family while simply not accepting Walmart bags and brands in your area of control. The aim must be driving the CEO, who publicly announced a larger gun-grabbing initiative, out of his job on the worst possible terms. Contrary to David French, Walmart is not a 50/50 customer base. It is not even close, as everybody knows. It should not take a year, and should not require closing stores, rather the revenue hit should be constantly reinforced with the clear, disciplined demand for policy “roll-back” and CEO sanctioning.
In the age of social media, can such a campaign be organized from the grassroots, or brassroots? Are there other social media campaigns from which to learn? Does it still take an organization with leadership? If so, what group or leader is most likely?
We have the power, and we will use it to rescue Walmart, starting to turn the corporate tide, or we will buy the rope to hang ourselves one shopping receipt at a time. The left has already signaled delight in Walmart as a leader providing cover and pressure for the complete removal of firearms from the public sphere, except of course for those in the hands of agents of the state and the private security forces of the elite. MAGA politicians, starting at the top, need to recognize the threat and start fixing the Walmart CEO at the center of negative public relations attention. Perhaps they could start with quoting and posting Tucker Carlson video clip remarks, or refer to his extended remarks at RealClearPolitics on Walmart.
And: we need to take a friend or relative to the range, with pistols, and maybe one of those “scary” guns with the mild recoil of .223 ammunition. Another Ricochet member has this just right:
We are being othered once again and backed into a (cultural corner). It’s the same playbook they used on smoking: We know they would use it, and yet we are letting them win.
We need to make gun ownership normal. It’s up to us, not the NRA, not the politicians, not anyone else. Take someone shooting. When we do that, we win. It’s that easy.
Rock out to Snap! on the way to the range: “(I’ve Got) The Power.”
And: Perhaps even make it a range afternoon, after weekly worship services. As another Ricochet member, a friend, pointed out in another of my political posts, what we really need is people looking up from themselves towards the divine. It is a heart condition problem, not a material tool problem.
[8 September 2019: Thanks to great constructive, critical feedback, I offer this extensively revised, expanded argument on my 5 September base piece. For an extended, thoughtful rebuttal, “So, who am I boycotting this week?” see our Member Feed. Not yet a member? You are really missing out! Try it out, and I believe you will agree.]
Published in Guns
Soundtrack for this post:
In the alternate:
Boycotting Walmart? A pretty daunting proposal. I avoid it already because of the customers and it’s depressing in general.
I never liked the idea of greeters, it ultimately becomes a monetization of a social interaction and I resent being in the position of having to participate or having to make myself callous.
But now they’ve turned into receipt-checkers. I have to stand there waiting for some schlub to determine I’m not a petty thief.
I am beginning to despise corporations. I’ve defended them from leftists for decades. First they were a boon to progress, then, a necessary economic entity, then a necessary evil, and by the time they started monetizing our attention, treating people like criminals and forcing employees to become automatons, just evil ( notable that Google’s catchphrase was “ don’t be evil” even they already had a sense of how easy it could be), just plain evil.
Then I realized how absolutely uncaring they were about their home or mother country, how they had zero incentive to have even a modicum of civic pride or duty to a town or loyal employees.
So I’m ‘boycotting’ most of them to the extent I can. I’m no longer fixated on low prices.
Almost never go there. My wife won’t ever go because they’re chaotic, ugly, too big and don’t have the same quality. Where we live there is lots of superior competition. Walmart made a calculation that will help Amazon and sporting goods stores a little but they don’t think it will harm them. There are some European supermarkets opening up that compete on price and are nicer than Walmart, they, like Wegman’s and Giant, and a few others, don’t sell guns or ammunition either. Such things are sold in sporting goods stores which aren’t doing particularly well. Is it a dying business or is it all on line? How are Chinese tariffs affecting Walmart sales? Walmart drove business out of small towns. I wonder if those consumers will just go on line and use Amazon for everything.
I generally don’t shop there as it is for a variety of reasons ranging from poor quality to poor customer service. But this is too much and too far.
Socially shame friends and family for shopping at Walmart? All because Walmart is ending ammo sales?
Look I’m fine with boycotting stores for being overly woke – there are many brands and stores I avoid because of their reputations, but I’m not about to alienate friends and family over where they shop over something this small. My snooping into their shopping habits as a reason to morally castigate them and turn them into social pariahs is nothing short of rude nosiness and self righteousness – it’s the sort of moral priggishness the Left does all the time (see Chick Fil A), and we rightly mock and deride them for it. For us to mirror that behavior is to stoop down to their level.
Here is where we part company, Clifford.
First, I hate Walmart. And not for the right reasons. Our Walmart is gross and dirty. We were there over the weekend against my protestations (“We can get all that stuff on Amazon if you’d just think ahead!”), and there were tweakers hanging out in the parking lot, some weird lady wanted me to jump her car, it’s literal back in the trees off the highway and it’s creepy back there. Our quasi-socialists who run Bellingham won’t allow a new Walmart, and the Lummi Tribe has had every opportunity to open one but instead chose to buy a failing golf course.
So keep that in mind when I say:
I’ll go to Walmart if I damn well please. I’ll go based upon my own reasons, my own judgement, and whether or not I think it’s worth my time and money for whatever it is I want. You want to immediately shame me, socially, and intensively, for “slacking off?” For slacking off? Dude, I’m making this country right now. Me and a million guys like me. I get up and I go to work and I work hard and come home and raise my kids and love my wife. I donate money and time to worthy causes. I live my life the way I want to live it. If I’m not gonna buckle to the social pressure from the left, I’m sure as HELL not gonna buckle to the social pressure from the right. Doing it our way is what makes us conservative. Our way. Not your way.
Walmart? Their goose is cooked. The left have always hated them, the right hates them now too. They are done, they just don’t know it yet.
Ok, I got that off my chest, Clifford. You know I love ya, man! :-)
Without all the upstanding, law-abiding open carry citizens shopping by my side at Walmart, I just do not feel safe there anymore…especially with all the mass shootings and such going on.
You would think WalMart would look at Target and their bathroom fiasco and learn something.
In general, boycotts don’t work (although the reverse boycott of Chik-fil-A was a wonder to behold). However, CEOs don’t like to see profits go down even a tiny bit, and WalMart won’t be able to make up the lost revenue from no ammo sales with Antifa tee shirts . . .
I do not shop at Walmart much anyway. They have surprisingly good car batteries, and they carry a multi-vitamin I like , but I have little inclination to shop there anyway.
My boycotting is more focused on REI and Dick’s Sporting Goods, both of which I actually shopped at. REI never sold guns anyway, but they went so far as to drop non – gun related items by conglomerates that were also in the gun industry ( some brand of water bottle , I think ). I had no problems with them not selling guns or ammo, but I thought targeting the other products was a little over the top. And I told them that when they sent me survey asking why I seemed to have stopped shopping there.
My thought about this was that it was a mistake for WalMart; the whole business model is based on the well-founded idea that if you wander in there to buy laundry detergent, you’ll walk out with a cartload of stuff it never occurred to you to want. Presumably ammo buyers are no less likely than any other customer to heed the siren song of $4 jammie-pants, candy, frozen peas, Thanksgiving-themed paper napkins (it’s right around the corner!) and maybe that four-gallon pail of Downy Fabric Softener for only $8.99.
Instead, they’ll go to actual gun shops, which will enjoy the increased revenue and the accompanying pro-2A across-the-counter chit-chat. Wal-Mart will become even more the spooky, fluorescent-lit haunt of people trying to stretch government dollars that couldn’t have been used for ammo anyway.
While a crook walks by with the 60″ HDTV he just swiped. Happens here every other year . . .
Exactly. They need floor traffic, and the guns and ammo section is waaay inside the stores, requiring you to walk past all manner of things you never knew you needed.
It worked in 1955-1956. The Second Amendment is a leading indicator for the rest of our liberty and the Constitution as a whole. I did not advocate snooping, rather making clear that those particular bags are not welcome. It is possible to gently chide, to pressure without getting ugly up front. It was right in 1955-1956, and it is right now.
If Walmart is not made an early and stark example of, the rest of the retail sector will follow in treating gun ownership like cigarette smoking. Receipts = rope.
Maybe. But ask yourself where you buy guns and ammo. I’m thinking of the large box stores that I buy guns and ammo at. None of them. I buy from local gun dealers and maybe Cabella’s when I’m down there. I have bought ammunition from Walmart on rare occasion. My local Fred Meyer (don’t know if you have them) has never had much of a sporting goods section beyond sports stuff (bats and balls, etc.) and when they put in a gun case I was surprised. Nobody is going to notice when the few big stores that sell guns and ammo stop doing so, except us.
I guess I don’t see the comparison. Nobody is saying gun owners have to ride at the back of the bus nor use a certain water fountain. Maybe it will get there, but I don’t think so.
Actually, Walmart is now saying that guns are like cigarettes and to be actively socially stigmatized. Their CEO is working incrementally to a total gun grab. He is pushing an “assault weapons” ban and communicating that handguns should be made unavailable for purchase by responsible businesses. He dresses it up with the standard old gun-grabber line about respecting “hunting and sports.”
https://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-gun-ammunition-changes-ceo-memo-to-employees-2019-9
receipts = rope
So would it be legal to open a cannon selling store?
Cigarettes were being priced out of existence and then vaping came along.
So maybe there is a gun that is not a gun alternative?
What does that mean?
What what sort of cannon would you like?
http://steencannons.com/cannons/u-s-3-inch-ordnance-rifle/
If they are pre-1900 in basic design and do not use pre-loaded and primed rounds (as seen in modern war movies), then you are welcome to have your own cannon, which is perfectly to shoot.
Which is of course the kind you want. Otherwise, how will you shoot grape shot?
It’s all just so relentless. I was thinking today about how I could take a stand against Walmart and I think it is pretty easy for me to avoid going there in general. The problem is, all of our stores are just as annoying in their “woke” politics. Take Wegmans, for example. If you go to throw something out there, the garbage can inscription reminds you that you are contributing to “landfill.” Strolling through the aisles a shopper is reminded about energy used and encouraged to adopt a “plant-based” diet to address climate change. For the love of Pete, I just want to buy toilet paper and groceries! Do I need to be scolded at every turn?
The liberal responds: “well, conservatives can just open their own grocery stores” but can they really? More and more the levers of power are controlled by the Left and our choices are limited. I mean, there are banks that won’t do business with customers whose views the bank finds objectionable. How do you start anything without funding?
Andrew Klavan has been talking about the power of narrative all week and he is right. We are losing this battle partly because our “story” is terribly told but also because we are increasingly silenced. Walmart has apparently chosen its side. I pray they suffer for it.
Points back to the OP:
This could actually be the beginning of an opportunity to undo some of the economic damage caused by Walmart. Their model has been to look at a community and all of the small businesses operating there. If the combined receipts of those businesses equal the expected receipts of a Walmart store, they open a store and put everyone else out of business, and the only healthy business left is Walmart.
Now, by refusing to sell guns and ammo, they are providing an opportunity for a gun store to be a thriving business, and there are two healthy businesses in town. The question becomes, what else can we shame them into not selling?
Red meat? With all the climate damage caused by cow flatulence? Shazam, you’ve got yourself a butcher shop. Paper products? Do you know how much deforestation is taking place to produce paper? Bam, a new Dollar store. Automotive services for gas-guzzling cars? An auto parts store and a Firestone Service Center.
Keep it up, and you could end up with a thriving local economy, and Walmart will be reduced to being the Molded Plastic Crap from China Store.
I’m not big on boycotting. But Walmart (and Nike, though in my opinion, Nike products have sucked for the last 20 years.) gets no more of my dollars. Zip, Zilch, Zero, Nada. I’m not going to proselytize against them, but I will let anyone who proclaims they shop there that they are short sighted.
And I’ll hold no ill will against anyone who shops there due to need. Like when @spin realizes his time came early this month and needs to make an emergency tampon run (chillax, that’s a joke, DAT).
I’m with you, @bossmongo. I generally don’t jump on the boycott bandwagon but the Walmart thing is particularly annoying given the disdain it has now shown the majority of its customer base. Does it think the “woke” SJW crowd shops there? The only time I see that crowd there is when it’s time to buy cheap stuff to fill dorm rooms and even then it does it begrudgingly.
I would love to see a rebirth of local shops and services but I really don’t see it happening. We had a great little hardware store in our village and we were happy to patronize it – even paying more for stuff we knew we could get on the cheap at HD or Lowes, but it finally closed its doors a few years ago. It had been a village institution having been there for decades and I still miss just walking down there on a Saturday morning and walking the floors that were literally covered with saw dust. We bought our paint there, gardening tools, hard-to-find nuts/bolts/screws and even building supplies. They had popcorn available and the staff was friendly and smart. What a shame it is gone.
You wanna take a poke at me?
I think I already did that.
I wonder what the scion of the creator of the Walmart empire, a Green Beret awarded the Silver Star serving in the ‘Nam with MAC-V SOG, would think about this issue, were he not already in Valhalla.
That isn’t the line. If you are going to Stripes on me, you need to keep up.
Ah, entiendo. Well done, DAT.