WMT Walmart Inc

By Paul Ziobro 

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will soon stop selling semiautomatic rifles, removing what have become politicized items from shelves for reasons the retailer says are purely business.

Wal-Mart, the nation's biggest seller of guns and ammunition, will eliminate AR-15s and other modern sporting rifles, spokesman Kory Lundberg said Wednesday. Instead, the retailer will carry more shotguns and other hunting weapons. Mr. Lundberg said the decision was based on shifting demand from shoppers. "It's about what customers are buying and what they're not," he said.

The change, reported earlier Wednesday by Quartz, comes as such semiautomatic arms, described by opponents as assault weapons, remain a flash point in the national gun debate that is faced with yet another high-profile shooting. On Wednesday morning, two television reporters were killed while conducting an interview in Moneta, Va.

Wal-Mart's decision to phase out modern sporting rifles--a category that includes firearms based on the AR-15 platform, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation-- was months in the making, Mr. Lundberg said. The changes are being rolled out to stores this week as Wal-Mart updates its sporting goods sections for the fall season. The guns Wal-Mart are removing are sold in less than a third of its 4,500 U.S. stores.

The retailer has long held that it will carry products, including firearms, to serve hunters and sportsmen, but it doesn't sell items such as adult films, or music with explicit-lyric warning labels or, outside of Alaska, handguns. Earlier this year, it vowed to remove merchandise from its stores that depicted the Confederate battle flag.

Wal-Mart has also faced pressure from shareholders to stop selling these items. New York's Trinity Wall Street Church tried to get the retailer to have shareholders vote on a resolution that would have required Wal-Mart's board to review management decisions to sell such weapons, as well as any other products that could harm the company's reputation. Wal-Mart objected to the resolution, saying the matter involved everyday business decisions.

The disagreement went to court and Wal-Mart prevailed in June when a federal appeals court said the shareholder resolution didn't have to be put to a vote.

Write to Paul Ziobro at Paul.Ziobro@wsj.com

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 26, 2015 16:05 ET (20:05 GMT)

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