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NEWS: In statement, Walmart says it is raising its age requirement for gun and ammo purchases to 21. It's also taking items off its website that look like assault-style weapons.
— Jennifer Bendery (@jbendery) February 28, 2018
Why are companies moving left on social issues? Because that’s where affluent adults aged 25-54 are moving. Senior citizens are an important voter bloc but corporations ignore their preferences. Sad! https://t.co/IfCP5AgHh5
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) March 1, 2018
… The main reason that companies have been increasingly willing to take one side of hot-button social issues (the left-leaning side) is that’s increasingly a good strategy to please customers and employees.
Partly, this is because certain policy issues have disproportionately left-leaning polling. Gay rights are popular. Most of the gun regulations on offer in the current debate poll well, too.
But it’s also because socially liberal segments of the public punch above their weight as potential customers (and, in some cases, as potential employees) for these companies…
Meanwhile, in recent decades, American politics has become much more polarized by age than it used to be, and much less polarized by income than it used to be. Affluent people are not (yet) a Democratic-leaning demographic, but they’re not the strongly Republican-leaning demographic they were 30 years ago. And young people report strongly liberal attitudes on social issues and strong opposition to President Donald Trump.
All of which means, when a company like Delta Air Lines imagines its average target customer — on the early side of middle age with plenty of disposable income — that customer is probably a lot farther to the left politically, especially on social issues, than would have been true in the past…
Fun old blog post about who “frequent fliers” are, maybe relevant to question of where $ incentives lie for airlines mixing w/politics
Highly-educated, high income, active online, and even in 2009 D+9. Wonder what’s happened with this demo since then… https://t.co/opKftN9VLD pic.twitter.com/GX7To3SDUV
— Will Jordan (@williamjordann) February 28, 2018
OzarkHillbilly
$80,000/ year is rich? College educated people tend to be Republican?
OzarkHillbilly
I guess trump doesn’t know that they don’t house male and female prisoners together.
MattF
Also, I suspect there’s a higher percentage of women in the frequent-flyer demographic than there used to be. Not all guys any more.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@MattF: Probably more POC as well.
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
It must be awful to work there, though. You forget that about horrible people- that they’re also horrible to other terrible people.
I saw something yesterday where career people who work for Sessions have noticed Sessions only defends when Trump attacks him personally. He doesn’t defend the department- the people who work for him.
Kay
I don’t think this theory fits for Wal Mart. Them moving away from gun fetishism seems to me like a real move.
Wal Mart (IMO, based on the stores in northern OH and MI and IN) has gone from being a middle class store to a really low end store. The stores are a mess. They’re dirty and disorganized and they’re aren’t enough employees there to run them properly. People here are convinced the stores have gotten dimmer- like, not well-lit enough. They think it’s some cost-saving measure. They don’t even maintain the exterior or the grounds. There’s trash blowing all over the place and they haven’t cleaned up the exteriors of the building since they put them up. I think this last generation of Waltons are just plundering.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Axis Sally got a 15 year sentence for broadcasting propaganda.
Just sayin’
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: I can’t imagine what it’s like.
Wag
When I was growing up in Colorado, you could but 3.2 beer at age 18, but had to be 21 to buy wine and liquor.
In our country you can now buy any rifle, including an assault rifle, at age 18, but have to wait until 21 to buy a handgun.
So does that mean assault guns are the firearm equivalent of 3.2 beer? WTF????
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: The Walmarts around here are run well enough.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Wag: Legal analyst on the local news here was saying that there’d be lawsuits about this and that they’d have a good case, since 18 is an adult. I think he’s full of shit, you can’t buy booze or cigs here in CA until you’re 21.
Kay
@Wag:
I wonder if people are just sick of it. They’re sick of the regular-as-clockwork tragedies and the sadness and the mayhem. How many times have we seen that gun, the profile of it or a photograph, the AR-15? I fucking hate that thing. It looks like pure evil.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
He’s so fat the button is about to pop off his suit.
I don’t I’ve ever seen someone wear six inch stilettos to a funeral
(photo)
raven
Baud
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: Heh.
Baud
@raven:
Aha! So it’s the school children’s fault! I knew it!
raven
@Baud: The dead ones.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone ???
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@rikyrah: Good morning!
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: @Baud: Dead school children were the latest fad. They were all the rage.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
“And she’s practically as pretty as my daughter. Maybe a 9.”
Baud
@Kay:
I still say part of it is that people don’t have Obama to lean on now. It’s frustrating but there’s this weird feedback loop that our side has where they check out when the Dems have the presidency.
Kay
I did not know this until this last shooting- I thought the only difference was you could hit more people, faster:
The damage is much worse- they’re much less likely to survive.
Wag
And here’s a lovely bit of news out of Russia this morning. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/01/vladimir-putin-threatens-arms-race-with-new-missiles-announcement?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Turing incoming nukes into a game of Galaga or Space Invaders.
debbie
@raven:
It also times out with all the militias that sprang up when Clinton became president.
debbie
@Kay:
Which makes the defense of using them for hunting even stupider.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: A good number of Democrats need a refresher high school Government course.
raven
@Kay: That is what they were made to do. Of course for several days Mornin Joe railed that the AR-15 was more deadly than the M-16 when they fire that same round.
Kay
@Baud:
Sure, that could be true but I still don’t think that explains Wal Mart. Wal Mart here is the gun demographic. That’s their customer. Maybe too much. Maybe that’s why people here drive 20 miles to grocery shop at Meijer, which has basically the same prices and is an actual grocery store :)
Hoodie
@Kay: They’re going after online sales and even web services, competing with Amazon. They’re probably disinvesting in brick and mortar, particularly in low-margin areas. A lot of those stores will be closed in the next few years, maybe replaced with some other version, like Target’s small stores in urban areas. That’s part of the demographic trend described in this article. The only thing the GOP base has left is gerrymandering.
Baud
@Kay:
People are responding to the absence of Obama, Walmart is responding to the people. I don’t think Walmart would be doing this if everyone else were ho him in response to the latest shooting.
OzarkHillbilly
So much for arming the teachers: Georgia police take teacher into custody after shots fired at school
Where is a good guy with a gun when you need one.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: 538 picked it apart a while ago for midterm elections: there’s a party-with-the-White-House disadvantage, and a Democratic disadvantage, and they’re of roughly equal size. That probably generalizes to some degree to political engagement outside of presidential years.
It’s not necessarily any special character defect of Democrats; our voters are more likely to be financially insecure and working multiple jobs, to be raising young children, to be students living far away from where they’re registered to vote, to be the targets of various suppression measures, etc. And they don’t have the self-propagandizing pipeline of Fox News and media telling them to be terrified all the time.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Pretty weird, he was in trouble for reporting himself for a murder and was still teaching in that school.
Kay
@debbie:
A physician who treated victims of a shooting in a FL airport (not an AR-15) also treated the high school kids and she said that’s why so many of those hit with that gun die. There’s just massive bleeding and organ damage. So maybe instead of fighting over the definition of an assault rifle they could categorize differently.
Nothing more powerful than a rifle?
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
But all that is still true. It doesn’t explain why now? (If this really is different.)
Baud
@Kay:
No way, Kay. No one knows what an assault rifle truly is. It’s as mysterious as God.
different-church-lady
Ah, good. Soon you will need to be at least 21 before you can go shoot up a school.
debbie
@Kay:
Single shot. Period.
Waldo
@OzarkHillbilly: Trump will call him a coward for not rushing in and shooting himself.
Kay
@debbie:
Is a rifle a single shot? I can’t get into this. Let’s just go with “the cartridge” whatever the hell that is. Velocity. They don’t believe in biology but I’m pretty sure they still believe in physics. If not we can drop a gun on their head.
satby
@rikyrah: Good morning?
debbie
@Kay:
I don’t know either, to be honest. I’m just sick of giving in to these fuckers. No more!
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie: @Kay: The AR-15 uses a .223 Remington cartridge (also known as 5.56 mm), a caliber commonly used for hunting varmints. There are many calibers used in hunting that impart far more kinetic energy. Comparing the .223 Rem to a 9mm Parabellum isn’t an apples to oranges comparison but they aren’t explaining the reasons why one does so much more damage in a meaningful way. The bullets in a .223 are likely to be smaller with a lot more powder pushing it because it’s casing is larger than a handgun round. This is true for nearly all rifle calibers vs handgun calibers. The advantage of the .223 is that it is a high velocity, low recoil round, which makes it far easier to fire repeat shots with some accuracy. My .30-06 bolt action kicks like a mule. The .223 in a bolt action is more like a push. In a semi-auto, it is probably hardly there at all. (Raven?)
I have read that in the military loads of the .223, the bullet has a tendency to tumble upon impact increasing the amount of damage the bullet will do. I have no idea if this is true or not.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: All that means is that Democrats need a larger push to get energized (they turn out just fine in presidential elections, for instance–wasn’t quite enough in 2016, but there’s not a consistent disadvantage there).
The totality of the Trump administration is a large push.
Schlemazel
@OzarkHillbilly:
We simply MUST arm every student. We won’t be truly free until we can have running gun battle in the hallways
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
All the more reason to ban assault rifles for civilian use. If I’m understanding what you’re saying, they’re overkill and aren’t needed for hunting.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: They probably couldn’t find a substitute teacher. End of snark, that IS weird. The article at the Guardian doesn’t have anything on the guys history or motive.
Schlemazel
@Kay:
I think it would be more useful to ban long guns with removable magazines and limit magazine size to 5.
Baud
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
Ooooooh. We finally get to test that Hell Hath No Fury theory. Turn your guns into popcorn and stay tuned.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: I think that, while there are differences in the damage done by different types of long gun, getting into the effects of different calibers and types of round is probably splitting hairs. I’m about as non-expert as you can get, but it seems to me that the main thing concerning mass shootings is that (1) long guns do a lot more damage per shot than handguns, and (2) semiautomatic long guns can be fired rapidly, many times, to do it to a lot more people. And there aren’t a lot of legitimate reasons for civilians to have the second aspect on the menu.
Overall handguns are actually a bigger problem, but that’s just because there are so many of them and they’re easy to hide and carry (a different issue).
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: Rifles can be single shot. Bolt, pump, lever, and hunting semi autos generally have a 5 round magazine.
ThresherK
@Kay: When I go to Wal-Mart locations in nicer suburbs (probably as nice a location as they get in) in suburban New England they are not like that.
I think it’s more about the strata of the customer or potential customer here.
And I can’t imagine many McD’s being run that way. Every one is supposed to be the same (even as some are better than others). Wal-Mart has managed to underdo McDonald’s in this manner.
Baud
@ThresherK: It might also depend on when they were built.
danielx
@Baud:
If you had to give a definition, any semiautomatic rifle capable of using firing more than five shots without reloading wouldn’t be a bad place to start. That would include virtually all modern infantry weapons, to the best of my knowledge. It would not include bolt or lever guns, which comprise the vast majority of hunting rifles. I have not heard of any mass murders committed with grandpappy’s old thirty-thirty lever action, be it noted.
Lapassionara
@Baud: This is true. And it is also true that you are not permitted to participate in the debate about guns if you don’t use the correct terminology.
If a gun cannot be used for hunting because of the damage it does to the animal being shot, then it should not be legal to possess.
danielx
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
“I can do all the lying necessary all by myself!”
Presumably she was under oath when she admitted she lies for the shitgibbon on occasion, and she takes a potential perjury charge seriously. Unlike her former boss, who lies as a matter of course and doesn’t see anything wrong with it. As for how seriously he takes an oath, this is Donald J. Trump.
ThresherK
@Baud: Perhaps, but there’s a history of Wal-Mart being the only store for miles around in some places, and having real competition in others. I’m lucky enough to be in the latter.
Kay
jonas
@Kay: I think it depends on the area. I suspect, however, that the Waltons really don’t have an eye on their stores anymore so much as on Amazon and online retailing. That’s where the future is and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Walmart (as well as Target) eventually abandon a lot of their stores as more retailing moves online. In the meantime, they’ll probably just let a lot of them go to seed.
Baud
@Kay: Trump would have hit his targets.
gene108
@Kay:
When I was a little kid, in Ann Arbor, in the late 70’s our Meijer’s had a loft / second floor strip of shops that was off one of the walls.
There was a barber shop, where my mom took me and my brother to get our hair cut. Next door was a donut shop, so if we were good and nagged our mom just right we could get a donut after the haircut.
Would just go back to see how the store has changed, if I could.
I don’t think there’s a grocery store / barber shop combo any more.
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie: Absolutely. Assault rifles are made to kill… people. Nothing else. Lately there has been an effort to repurpose them for hunting (larger calibers etc) and I have seen a big push in that direction on the covers of the gun porn magazines, but this is all done in an attempt to normalize them. Nobody needs more than 5 rounds while hunting**, and if they do, what they really need is practice.
**when I hunted I rarely missed, but when I did I never had a 2nd shot. Deer are too quick and our woods are too thick.
OzarkHillbilly
@Schlemazel: That is my proposal, except I would apply it to handguns too. Jared Loughner used 30 round clips in his massacre, and wasn’t stopped until a good woman without a gun grabbed** his gunhand when he had to reload.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: That is a weird, weird picture. Is Pence about to cry? Why is Trump’s hand on Pence’s knee? Why is Melania smiling as she sits there between then?
satby
@gene108: actually, several of the Meijers around here have small beauty parlor /barber shops, nail shops, and bank branches inside. So do the Walmarts.
Matt McIrvin
@OzarkHillbilly: One of the guns the Columbine killers used was a semiautomatic handgun with huge magazines–banned under the ’94 law, but theirs was grandfathered in. Even emphasizing the difference between an AR-15 and a handgun probably underplays the danger of such handguns.
gene108
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
I wonder, if she wanted to quit, but was looking for a way to do it.
Watched Erin Burnett for a bit last night. She had Tom Rooney (R-dipshit) on and he was whining about how the question of whether Hope lies for the President or not was soooo unfair. It was well out of bounds of the Russia investigation and was set-up as a gotcha question, because sometimes, he tells his secretary to say he’s not there, if he wants to avoid a call and that means his secretary is lying for him.
He really seemed hell bent on finding ways to exonerate Trump from charges of working with the Russians.
satby
March is coming in like a lion here, with rain turning to freezing rain, turning into snow later today. The floods from last week subsided here, but we’re still under flood watch. Won’t take much to overtop the river banks again, and some areas were still flooded.
OzarkHillbilly
@Matt McIrvin: In my ideal world there would be a mandatory buyback period of say 2 or 3 years financed by a tax on firearms and ammo sales. After which there would also be severe penalties for anyone in possession, and even more severe penalties for anyone selling, or manufacturing.
Honus
@OzarkHillbilly: yes it’s true. It was specifically designed to tumble like that for that reason.
Your 30-06 was the military round for decades. It’s a much bigger bullet and about a third slower than a .223. The .223 doesn’t kick as hard, it’s designed for automatic as well as single fire, and because it’s a smaller, lighter round, you can carry more rounds with the same weight than a .308 NATO or a 30-06. Also, the armalite/stoner rifle is a lot lighter than an M-1 or M-14.
The Kalashniov (AK-47) is much different than the AR-15/M-16. It fires a short casing 7.62 (.30 cal.) round that is a heavier bullet and much slower than the .223. The .223 is accurate and effective for several hundred yards. The AK-47 round is pretty worthless over 150-200 yards. The trade off is that the AK47 is cheap and reliable. The M-16/AR-15 more expensive and requires more care.
Kay
@gene108:
They still have the coin-operated kiddie rides for a penny. Well, “ride”. They go really slowly. Like an inch. Up and down. The most boring ride in the world.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Yea, they are little Mattel rifles.
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: I heard spring peepers down by Indian Creek yestereve.
opiejeanne
@OzarkHillbilly: I did not know that about how Loughner’s shooting spree ended. I do know that people at the event who were armed hesitated to use their weapons because they weren’t sure who the shooter was because the scene was so chaotic. Her aide who was shielding Gabby after she was hit and on the ground was almost shot by a “good guy with a gun”.
Honus
@debbie: absolutely. An AR-15 with a 30 round magazine is a joke for hunting. While the .223 round will kill a deer, the .270, 30-06, 7mm-08 or .243 are far superior.
OzarkHillbilly
@Honus: You can bury an AK-47 in the mud for a year, dig it up and fire it w/o even bothering to wipe off the mud.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly:
Kay
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
You know he screams at them all the time and that probably travels right down the line where they’re mean to their underlings too. The horrible part is how many people seem to admire that.
Matt McIrvin
@OzarkHillbilly: I think the biggest problem with the 1994 federal ban wasn’t that it had bad criteria (they were imperfect but way better than nothing), it was that it didn’t actually grab any guns. Guns that people already owned were all grandfathered in. In hindsight, it probably had some positive effect anyway.
Honus
@Schlemazel: he’ll, limit it to three. I never knew anybody with any sense that shot a deer five times. Duck hunters often have shots at multiple birds and are already limited by law to three rounds.
Kay
@opiejeanne:
That might be deceptive though because obviously those categories of people are more likely to be armed. If you’re a police officer in Ohio you don’t need a CCW permit.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: My experience with those kinds of coin-operated kiddie rides is that the kids little enough to ride them are just as happy to climb and play on them when they’re stationary. I don’t know how they make any money. (I’ve never seen any that are still a penny, though.)
OzarkHillbilly
@opiejeanne: Yeah, an older woman (60s i think) she jumped up and grabbed his gun hand and caused him to drop his 2nd clip, just as a couple other guys tackled him. I was in a barbershop and was listening to a conversation between a couple locals, the basic gist of it was that banning expanded round magazines was a useless thing to do.
One said in agreement, “Yeah, you know how long it takes me to replace a clip?”
To which I interjected, “Long enough to stop Jared Loughner.”
The weather suddenly assumed great importance.
rikyrah
@Kay:
LarryO read a report from one of the trauma doctors after this last shooting, and the doctor tried to explain the difference between guns and the machine of war. It was grim??
Baud
Some good news.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
When they get a little older they ride them just to jeer at them. Mine used to say “oh, THIS stupid thing”, as they’re clamboring aboard. It’s one of their duties. Oh ALL right, I will get on the dinosaur.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: They got lucky, really lucky.
Honus
@OzarkHillbilly: yes, but you can’t hit anything much past 50 yards with it. You can shoot six inch groups at 250 yards all day long with a .223. Two completely different weapons. Both have their advantages and drawbacks.
BTW, Are you nearer to Elkins or Charleston?
OzarkHillbilly
@Matt McIrvin: The ’94 federal ban was an attempt at needle threading, trying not to hurt anybody’s feelings, hence the definitions were so narrow they were easily engineered around. You are right tho, it was better than the nothing we got now.
Kay
@rikyrah:
Maybe it’s hindsight with this new information I have but I feel like there’s a real sense of horror from the first responders after these things. I wonder if it’s that extreme carnage they’re seeing.
I was struck by what that doctor wrote, that 6 out of 7 survived the airport shooting because she could treat them. They’re dead by the time she gets them with the AR-15.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: I think the school is in a world of shit.
rikyrah
Anyone seen Quinerly?
Matt McIrvin
@OzarkHillbilly: The right is really fond of that kind of nibbled-to-death-by-ducks attack on any sort of regulation–in which the opposition pushes back to extract concessions of some sort, and then uses the imperfections induced by those concessions to argue that the whole thing is useless or absurd. We can’t ban all guns? OK, ban semiautomatics. You need supposedly need semiautomatics for some reason? We’ll ban large magazines. Oh, but that won’t do any good, you can switch magazines really quickly, so don’t bother doing anything.
The latest attempt to take down the ACA is in the same spirit. “We managed to damage the ACA in such a way that we can now construct an argument to call it unconstitutional, so now you have to overturn it completely!”
OzarkHillbilly
@Honus: The AK was perfect for the VC.
11 miles east of Sullivan MO.
Matt McIrvin
@OzarkHillbilly: A bunch of states still have regulations similar to the ’94 ban. Obviously you can carry guns trivially across state lines so they’re not all that effective. And they have the same defects–grandfathered weapons, criteria that let some pretty bad ones through. But I notice most of the really big mass shootings lately have been in states without these bans.
Honus
@OzarkHillbilly: this. Forget about defining assault rifles and just band detachable and/or high capacity magazines. That was pretty much the case until 30 years ago. Nothing except .22s held more than five shots. Revolvers and automatics held nine at most, and the vast majority held six or seven rounds.
Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)
@Schlemazel:
I agree with the magazine size limitation, but disagree with the long gun ban for the simple reason that while AW bans poll high, the instant you start talking about banning grandaddy’s Remington Model Four or antique Winchester SLR, that support will dissappear, at least among gun owners and their friends/families.
Hit the magazine sizes first, and then we can revisit the issue later if it’s not sufficient.
IMHO, half a loaf is better than over-reaching and coming out with the status quo.
Kay
We need some indictments this Friday just to push ’em over the edge :)
Chyron HR
@Baud:
FIFTY STATE STRATEGY! FIFTY STATE STRA–wait, what? They did? All of them?
(ahem)
WHY ARE DEMS RUNNING RACES THEY WON’T WIN? STOP BEING LOSERS, YOU LOSERS!
prufrock
@Kay: Interesting. This describes every K-Mart I went into before it closed.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Works for me ?
Honus
@OzarkHillbilly: sorry about that. I was getting you mixed up with JR in WV. It’s still early for me.
You are exactly right. The AK-47 was designed to be cheap to make, low tolerances, and reliable in poor conditions for use by third world and guerilla forces. The M-16 was for more well-trained and equipped NATO forces.
satby
@rikyrah: she’s on her great Southwest road trip. She posts on FB a lot, and in the morning road threads.
rikyrah
Kay,
Did I miss you commenting on the two loans revealed about Kushner while he was taking meetings in the White House?
rikyrah
@satby:
Oh good ????
Poco and the tribe are ok
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: As they should be.
@rikyrah: She checked into the On the Road thread.
Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)
@Honus:
The Browning GP35, M1 Carbine, and the AR-15 itself among others, were all available over 30 years ago.
Before, it was only military surplus and a few other models.
Now it seems that almost every gun maker sells at least one AR clone or other high capacity rifle, let alone the explosion of pistols with 15+ round magazines.
OzarkHillbilly
@Matt McIrvin:
That argument is answered with, “Well than good, they are totally needless and you have no objection then.”
raven
@Honus: NATo didn’t go the 5.56 until 1970.
Soprano2
@Kay:
Here in SWMO the Walmarts are mostly pretty decent. Last year they did a “remodel” of the one my my neighborhood, which consisted of a fresh coat of paint on the outside and some new shelving on the inside, plus pissing the customers off by moving a bunch of stuff around and changing the product mix somewhat. We’ve noticed that Walmart’s product prices seem to be getting higher, and they’ve gotten rid of a lot of the cheapest stuff, so I guess they’ve decided not to compete against the dollar stores. As for smaller Walmarts, they already have them here – they call them Neighborhood Markets. They’re a grocery store with some non-grocery stuff also available, and are a lot smaller than the supercenters. My regular Walmart has a hair salon, a nail salon, a Subway and a local bank branch inside up at the front. I do agree, though, that in many lower-profit places they’re probably not investing much money in the stores, because they figure eventually they’ll shut them down. As usual, it’ll be the marginal people who are hurt first. Further south in MO and northwest AR they tried something like a convenience store, but they ended up shutting them all down. In one town it really hurt, because it was the only store of any size in that town, because all the other local stores were closed down.
Honus
@Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman): AR-15s were available over forty years ago but you might see one or two in a gun shop once in a great while. Unlike now, when there are racks and racks of them, and you have to look to find a Model 70 or a Browning bolt action rifle. Housewives weren’t shooting hundreds of rounds an afternoon with them on gun ranges, Dana Loesch wasn’t posing in high heels with an AR-15. And 20 and thirty round magazines were pretty much unheard of then. The army used 15 round magazines in Vietnam.
Barry
@gene108: “When I was a little kid, in Ann Arbor, in the late 70’s our Meijer’s had a loft / second floor strip of shops that was off one of the walls.”
It still does. Not a bakery, though.
Kristine
Any idea whether the prize demographic is taller than average? Because more legroom would be a lovely concession.
I’m just outside that age range, but I still have legs that need room.
Barbara
@Kay: In addition to courting the same on-line shoppers that Amazon does, I think Wal-Mart has also looked more at expanding to a wider variety of low income consumers, that is, in urban areas, where gun violence is seen more as a serious threat to personal well-being than as a potential means to counter that threat. Wal-Mart has opened several stores in the District of Columbia over the last few years. I don’t expect them to abandon their traditional base but they probably can’t afford to take a hard line and feel the need to do something.
Kristine
@satby: I’m on the northern edge of that system. Looks like I’ll miss the bulk of it. Not complaining. My sump pump is sill working through the early thaw and last week’s storm.
MCA1
@Kay: Whatever the case on Walmart’s physical store quality, I think this combined with the Dick’s move is important. I want people to have to go to a seedy part of town to a place next to a pawn shop and other disreputable establishments to get their gun fix. It’s not a normal consumer impulse to buy a killing machine, but having them on display at giant retailers belies that. Make people feel a slight sense of shame about this sort of purchase, and make them go way out of their way to do it. We need to ostracize the gun humpers instead of acting like it’s perfectly normal that they can feed their fetish 30 feet away from where I’m picking out a slow cooker or a pressure washer or some bath towels.
BC in Illinois
You don’t need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
There is a St. Louis County Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense meeting tonight. They moved from the library meeting room, where they met in the past, to the local middle school auditorium. Here is their announcement from this morning:
They probably also need to mix more punch.
SiubhanDuinne
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
Trump is reaching across Melania to squeeze Pence’s knee! What’s that all about?
Ruckus
@Kay:
I know someone who worked directly for Mrs. Walton, financial affairs. It isn’t just he second generation according to him. They want maximum profits and don’t give a crap about their customers or employees. The family makes billions a year, they don’t care two shits about anyone but themselves. And really they make no pretense about it either.
frosty
@Kay: Dead thread probably, but the Guardian had a good article about the hospital staff after the Vegas shooting. They had to turn a civilian ER into a MASH unit with no warning. Did a good job, too.
gvg
If Walmart is pushing online sales, they need to improve their search engine. It comes up with too much nonsense with no connection to what I asked for. Didn’t use to. Almost as bead as Sears. Search search function is the worst I have ever seen and is also not compatible with many mobile devices. Also walmart is putting in associated merchants, not just their own stuff.
If I type in Spiderman dvd I should not get 47000 items including clothes that don’t have spiderman on them or furniture. No idea why they think they are more likely to make a sale if the overwhelm with wrong answers.
Walmart is getting seedy looking, even new stores. Stock outs are common for over 15 years and it’s getting worse. I don’t think the amount of diet coke you are going to sell is that unpredictable. Anyway, they should be in good position to do on line sales but probably won’t succeed because they aren’t putting competent work into it.
Amazon has the best reviews but their search does still get a little to non specific. Frankly ebay does that the best IMO. Good search results are the flaw I see in almost all online shops of real stores so far.
cmorenc
@Matt McIrvin:
Well, you never know when you might have to cut down a whole herd of deer before they can get away. As a hunter in the woods.
O. Felix Culpa
@rikyrah: I saw Quinerley, live and in person along with Cheryl Rofer, just over a week ago. She’s just returned home to St. Louis after her New Mexico trip. I think she’s taking a bit of a break from BJ, but she’s fine.
JanieM
@OzarkHillbilly:
I wouldn’t define $80,000 as “rich,” but roughly 2/3 of the households in the US have less. Depends on where you’re standing, I guess.
Edited for formatting…
No Drought No More
“Scaramucci also was irked that Kelly “would allow Hope to date Porter if he’s got that information.”
My question: As Trump is obviously orchestrating a campaign to can Kelly, where will the next scapegoat be found? Who is going to believe the problem is Kelly, and the ship has been righted?
Does The Mooch even care that Trump also knew of the allegations about Porter? Or is T. M. implying that Kelly intentionally withheld the information from Trump? Either or, the question stands: does he even care? Unless he’s cultivating a clown persona, he obviously doesn’t care about his own reputation, for example. So what does he care about? Having a camera pointed at his silly ass so he can spout off? I guess that must be it.
MomSense
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
WTF was that about? Maybe mother should change her rules to the prohibition on dinners with men without her present.
No Drought No More
MSNBC is running a chryon this morning which reads that “Trump accuses congress of being petrified by the NRA”. It’s occurred to me Trump might well be alluding to Russian/NRA monies that flooded GOP coffers, rather than pointing out the politically obvious. In fact, that explanation makes perfect sense to me.
No Drought No More
Has too much time passed for FOX “news” to conflate Billy Beer with Kushner’s $1/2 Billion dollars (with a B) worth of recent “loans”? Would anyone be surprised if they tried? Not me…
And let’s all chip in to the campaign coffers of the first congressional democrat to invoke Kushner’s “loans” in to the infamous vacuna coat of the Eisenhower era. You didn’t know a vacuna coat could be infamous? Then look it up.
Miss Bianca
@O. Felix Culpa: Hey, how did the meet-up go? Been meaning to ask! : )
Donna genz
@Kay: in populated urban and suburban areas I would agree with you. In smaller towns, they are the only option and yes, ours is dirty, poorly lit and underserved.
No Drought No More
So, Kushner arranged the “loans” at the White House. Is it to much to hope that the deals were cut in the Lincoln bedroom?
Probably so. It appears I’m growing a little greedy for more and more good news. I’ve cheered up considerably over the past year myself. Remember how you felt when you realized The Trumpster was your next president? Personally speaking, I could only stomach watching cartoons for the next six weeks. If I’d been a journalist at, say, MSNBC, I would have been fired for being AWOL..