Washington, DC — When Walmart announced their policy change a week ago today, gun owners across the county expressed their outrage.
After all, gun owners had purchased millions of dollars worth of guns and especially ammunition from them in past decades. Surely, they would feel an obligation to the people who had been so loyal to them!
One voice rang out that they weren’t surprised at Walmart’s decision.
Hornady Manufacturing posted on their Facebook page to remind gun owners that they had stopped doing business with Walmart back in 2007.
"As long as there is a Hornady at Hornady, we will never sell Walmart direct. They don’t support our industry." – Jason Hornady, 2007
Hornady stopped doing business with the world's largest retailer over 12 years ago.#believeinourpartners https://t.co/SUk4CKyVjn
— Hornady (@TeamHornady) September 4, 2019
In fact, back in 2007, Jason Hornady had said, “As long as there is a Hornady at Hornady, we will never sell Walmart direct. They don’t support our industry.”
Jason Hornady was recently interviewed and explained the company’s choice to stop selling direct to Walmart over twelve years ago.
He said, “In my previous life, I worked for a company that lived and died by Walmart. And like many companies, Walmart treated them poorly. And, as we were going through these things with Walmart, I decided that if I was ever in a situation where I didn’t have to do business with them, I would not. When I got to Hornady, we were doing some business with them, it wasn’t a lot, but they started to become difficult to work with again. I was in a situation where I made the decision for our company to walk away and everybody in the company supported my decision. And we have not looked back.”
When asked if there had been any serious repercussions, Jason Hornady said that the company had never regretted the decision to leave Walmart’s stores.
Walmart Loyalty Isn’t To Gun Owners
He also went on to explain why Walmart’s move shouldn’t shock anybody. They must have run the numbers and decided that this was the best course of action for their business.
But while Hornady was understanding that a business has the right to decide what to carry on their shelves, he made it clear that Walmart’s decision will be bad for gun owners.
Hornady said, “But, the thing about this is that it’s not good for the industry. Any time you make it harder for somebody to participate in a sport, I don’t care what sport it is, as soon as you make it harder for that customer to participate in the shooting sports, the more likely he is to find something else to do with his recreational time. It’s not going to be good for the shooting sports industry, and it makes me sad. Nobody thinks that it’s good for the shooting sports industry because it’s just eliminating access to somewhere around 4,700 to 4,800 stores.”
Now, more information has come to light about Walmart’s long-time involvement with Bloomberg’s Any Town for Gun Safety as far back as 2008.
It’s clear that Hornady saw the writing on the wall and made the right choice. It’s also clear that Walmart made their choice a long time ago.
We’re hopeful that when gun owners realize how Hornady Manufacturing was looking out for them already twelve years ago, they’ll see a boost from gun owners.
A case of ammo for Christmas would make any gun owner happy, right?
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