Retail Chains That Are NOT Banning Open Carry

By Ready to Fire News Last updated Sep 12, 2019

With the recent news that Walmart is changing their open carry policy, you may be wondering if other stores who allow it are going to follow suit.

In case you missed Walmart’s decision, they have changed their open carry policy to prohibiting customers from carrying their handguns openly. This happened on September 3rd. This obviously only affects states where open carry is already allowed. And the bad news is that many stores are following Walmart’s lead.

Other Stores Following Walmart’s Lead

In the week that followed Walmart’s announcement, other stores have decided to issue a similar request to their customers. Some of those stores include Kroger grocery stores, Wegmans Food Market, Meijer, Aldi, CVS, and Walgreens. They also have to train their employees on how to handle customers who disregard this new policy and open carry anyway. It’s a tricky situation that in making these policy changes these stores are going to have to deal with the aftermath.

There are also stores that are recommitting to their no gun policies, such as Target and Starbucks. They have had these policies in place since 2014 and 2013, respectively.

People Already Testing Walmart’s New Policy

There was a group of Second Amendment activists that belong to a club called Open Carry Texas who have in the past week showed up at various Walmart stores in open carry states with their handguns on them. It’s a silent protest of regular shopping and politely ignoring the new policy. This is a group of about 38,000 people. No one in this group has so far reported being asked to leave any of the Walmart stores. That probably won’t last long.

It may just be due to the fact that the policy is just too new, and the employees haven’t been trained on how to deal with the situation. A Walmart spokesperson has said that they are trying to handle the situation in a non-confrontational way. They clearly don’t want to alienate their customers who do open carry or upset any of the other shoppers.

Stores That Allow Open Carry or Don’t Have Gun Restrictions

There are still stores that allow open carry. Some of those include the TJX Companies, which include retail chains like TJ Maxx, Homegoods, and Marshalls. Their policy states that they follow local, state, and federal law regarding gun policies.

The large department store chain Macy’s also has a policy of not having gun restrictions and just follows the open carry laws of the states where they are located.

So if you want to support stores that leave the gun rights in the hands of their customers you may want to start shopping these stores. The more support they receive, the better!