Violence Policy Center Statement on Wal-Mart Decision to Stop Gun Sales: �No Surprise�

Washington, DC--Following today�s announcement by Wal-Mart that it was ending gun sales in approximately one third of its stores, Violence Policy Center (VPC) Executive Director Josh Sugarmann released the following statement:

�Wal-Mart�s decision is no surprise. The dirty little secret in the gun industry is that gun ownership in America is rapidly shrinking. The marketplace has spoken and the losers are America�s gun industry and the gun lobby. While the National Rifle Association claims that �almost half� of American homes have guns, the September 2005 edition of the journal Pediatrics reveals the real number to be less than a third. According to survey data from the National Opinion Research Center, from 1980 to 2004, gun ownership by men dropped by more than 10 percentage points�from 52 percent to 41.3 percent. At the same time, gun ownership by women has remained statistically stagnant at an average of little more than 11 percent.�

The Violence Policy Center is a national non-profit educational foundation that conducts research on violence in America and works to develop violence-reduction policies and proposals. The Center examines the role of firearms in America, conducts research on firearms violence, and explores new ways to decrease firearm-related death and injury.