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GUN VIOLENCE
On the Grocery List: Bread and Bullets
Vending-machine purchases make violence even more accessible
We don’t need more examples of how entrenched this country is into gun culture. But here’s the latest: Bullets sold through vending machines — in grocery stores.
The distributor, American Rounds, has installed a handful of machines in stores in Alabama, Texas and Oklahoma. Customer ID is scanned using facial recognition software. But there are no checks into criminal or mental-health or domestic-violence backgrounds.
“We are very pro-Second Amendment, but we are for responsible gun ownership, and we hope we’re improving the environment for the community,” company CEO Grant Magers told the Associated Press. More stores in other states have expressed interest, he said.
“How is that any different than Walmart?” said Lowe’s Market CEO Alan Buxkemper, who has a machine in a Texas store and plans to install another at a second store. The machines, defenders say, provide more oversight than online purchasing which often does not require proof of age.
But having more ways for buyers to avoid scrutiny and accountabilty makes little sense, if there is any real intention to reduce gun violence. In recent years, mass shootings have even happened inside grocery stores.
Gun violence is a public-health crisis, U.S. surgeon general Dr. Vivek Murthy recently declared. More than 48,000 Americans died from gun injuries in 2022. Weekends this summer have been marked by mass shootings that left dozens of people dead or wounded.
The latest polling from Kaiser Family Foundation found that a majority of U.S. adults have either personally or had a family member impacted by a gun-related incident, such as witnessing a shooting, being threatened by gun, or being injured or killed by a gun. Firearms now kill more children and adolescents than any other cause, surpassing motor-vehicle crashes.
To drive down gun deaths, Murthy calls on the U.S. to ban automatic rifles, introduce universal background checks for purchasing guns, regulate the industry, pass laws that would restrict their use in public spaces and penalize people who fail to safely store their weapons. Yet the country is moving in the direction on loosening gun controls.
That reality counters politicians’ declarations after the recent assassination attempt against former president Donald Trump: that gun violence has no place in America.
Instead, we ensure the tools of gun violence are more easily within reach — right on the next grocery aisle.
