The world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart, now plans to hold on to customers even after they die - by selling coffins.

Prices range from a "Mom" or "Dad Remembered" steel coffin for $895 (£540), to a bronze model at $2,899.

The retailer is allowing customers to plan ahead by paying for the caskets over 12 months for no interest. They can be dispatched within 48 hours.

Catering for cradle-to-grave needs, Wal-Mart already sells everything from baby wear to engagement rings.

A spokesman for the supermarket giant, Ravi Jariwala, said the new coffin range was "a limited beta test to understand customer response".

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Then the new CEO, Mr Funnybone Gunsight, said without cracking a smile: "since we sell guns, we ought to sell disposal units — bins... otherwise know as coffins. I believe they're going to be hot items, especially those in the shape of concrete boots. Our easy 12 month terms cash only by instalments, before delivery, is of course designed for the future grieving widows and to protect our profits from the mad customers in our weapon department...

from the Washington Post

He was at the heart of the landmark Supreme Court case that took down the District's handgun ban. But before arriving at the range, he warns in a text message: "You will find I'm not the best shot."

Once he fires a few rounds, however, it's clear that Tom G. Palmer is no novice, either. He lands a couple right in the torso of his human-shaped target. Then he aims at the target's head, misses once by a few inches, then hits twice.

But what good is such a skill, Palmer asks, if you're not free to protect yourself on the streets of your own city?

As one of the plaintiffs who sued the District for the right to keep handguns in the home, Palmer has one notch on his belt. Now he's suing the city again, this time for the right to carry firearms in public.

Palmer, a 53-year-old fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, says he thinks he has the Constitution on his side.

The Second Amendment guarantees Americans the right to "keep and bear arms," and "bear," he says, "means to carry." On the street in his Kalorama neighborhood. To the grocery store, the mall, the movies. But not everywhere: "There are all kinds of reasonable restrictions that can be established," he says. "But a blanket ban on carrying them does not seem to sit well with the Constitution itself."

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Gus — son of a gun: Now the question is: would carrying a bazooka be unconstitutional?... A tank is out of the question, since once cannot "carry it" (bear it) thus would be unconstitutional. But a bazooka, or a rocket launcher?... That is the AK47 question.

And I want one. See toon at top.

Undercover investigators have exposed the ease with which high-powered guns can be bought in the US, purchasing the same type of pistol used in the Tucson massacre just two weeks later in a neighbouring city – with no questions asked.

New York's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, sent a team of undercover agents to the Crossroads of the West gun show in Phoenix, Arizona, just 120 miles away from the scene of the Tucson shooting. There, on 23 January, they bought a Glock 9mm pistol of the kind wielded by Jared Loughner when he killed six people and wounded 13, including the US congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, at a public meeting in Tucson.

The agents filmed the gun sales using hidden cameras.

They bought a Glock 17 gun for $480 (£299) and three $40 extended magazines each holding 33 bullets. Loughner had a 33-round extended magazine attached to his Glock 19, allowing him to wreak carnage in Tucson by shooting multiple times.

The New York investigators bought the gun with no questions asked other than the requirement of an ID card.

Under current federal law, that sale was legal because of the so-called "gun show loophole" that allows occasional gun sellers to trade weapons without carrying out a background check to ensure that the purchaser is not mentally ill, a criminal, or a drug abuser. Such "private" sales are responsible for 40% of all gun sales in the US.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/31/tucson-shooting-gun-bought-undercover

Just since the killings in Tucson, another 320 or so Americans have been killed by guns — anonymously, with barely a whisker of attention. By tomorrow it’ll be 400 deaths. Every day, about 80 people die from guns, and several times as many are injured.

Handgun sales in Arizona soared by 60 percent on Monday, according to Bloomberg News, as buyers sought to beat any beefing up of gun laws. People also often buy guns in hopes of being safer. But the evidence is overwhelming that firearms actually endanger those who own them. One scholar, John Lott Jr., published a book suggesting that more guns lead to less crime, but many studies have now debunked that finding (although it’s also true that a boom in concealed weapons didn’t lead to the bloodbath that liberals had forecast).

A careful article forthcoming in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine by David Hemenway, a Harvard professor who wrote a brilliant book a few years ago reframing the gun debate as a public health challenge, makes clear that a gun in the home makes you much more likely to be shot — by accident, by suicide or by homicide.

The chances that a gun will be used to deter a home invasion are unbelievably remote, and dialing 911 is more effective in reducing injury than brandishing a weapon, the journal article says. But it adds that American children are 11 times more likely to die in a gun accident than in other developed countries, because of the prevalence of guns.

Likewise, suicide rates are higher in states with more guns, simply because there are more gun suicides.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/opinion/13kristof.html?_r=1&src=ISMR_HP_LO_MST_FB&pagewanted=print

Walmart became the world's largest retailer by offering "everyday low prices" around the globe. Apparently, though, Walmart was offering something else too. The company has been plunged into a major scandal since a New York Times investigation revealed that Walmart's Mexico subsidiary paid $24 million in bribes to local officials to sidestep regulations and obtain construction permits for new stores. The worst part: the story alleges that then CEO H. Lee Scott and other top executives knew exactly what was going on and tried to hush it up. "This looks to me like a comprehensive failure on the part of Walmart's board," says Stephen Davis, director of the Millstein Center for Corporate Governance at Yale.

The markets agree. Walmart's stock has already fallen 7.5%, knocking $17 billion in value off the company. If there is a too-big-to-fail retailer, Walmart would have to be it. It has sales of $444 billion, employs 2 million people and supports tens of thousands of suppliers, some of them consumer-product giants in their own right. Its stock is held by many of the world's major pension funds--meaning that Walmart's troubles are very likely affecting your retirement money right now.

It sounds like something from a futuristic thriller: police pick up spent bullet shells, find a tiny code on them that reveals what gun they were shot from and then use the ID to track down the killer. The technology to do this, called microstamping, is actually available today, but what’s stopping it from being used — and many criminals from being caught — is politics.

There are battles raging across the U.S. over microstamping, with supporters of the new technology squaring off against the gun lobby, which is strongly opposed. It is hard to see why the critics are so upset — and why they put so little value on microstamping’s potential to help fight crime.

As the backlash against America's lax gun laws continued to grow after the Newtown tragedy, Wal-Mart announced yesterday that it was suspending the sale of models of the AR-15 Bushmaster rifle similar to the one police say Adam Lanza used last Friday.

The decision by America's most recognised discount retailer followed a similar move by another chain, Dick's Sporting Goods, to suspend sales of all hunting rifles. At the same time, one of the country's largest asset management firms, Cerberus Capital, said it would sell its stake in Freedom Group, the maker of the Bushmaster, lending weight to the sense that patience with years of inertia on gun control may have snapped.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/newtown-massacre-barack-obama-plans-to-reinstate-assault-weapons-ban-as-retail-giants-suspend-rifle-sales-after-backlash-8424569.html

See toon at top...

Walmart said on Wednesday that it would no longer sell high-powered rifles in its stores in the United States. The decision followed years of public pressure on the retailer to stop selling some of the most lethal weapons associated with many of the nation’s mass shootings.

The move predated the fatal shootings of two TV journalists in Virginia on Wednesday, and authorities have said the gunman in that attack used a handgun, a type of weapon the company does not sell.

Walmart, the nation’s largest seller of guns and ammunition, attributed its decision to lower consumer demand for such military-style rifles, not gun politics. It said that it was adding to its offerings of shotguns and other weapons used by hunters.

The decision put Walmart’s gun sale policies back in the spotlight as debates over gun control erupted again because of the Virginia shootings. Gun control advocates viewed the company’s action as significant because similar types of weapons were used by shooters in recent massacres, including an attack on a Colorado movie theater by a gunman who killed 12 people, and the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, in which 20 children and six adult staff members died.

read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/27/business/walmart-to-end-sales-of-assault-rifles-in-us-stores.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=third-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

See toon at top...

Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

For years, the company was involved in making questionable payments to governments around the globe in order to open new locations, prosecutors said.

The guilty plea, and the $282 million settlement, capped one of the biggest investigations under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Read more at the NYT

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Why are California liberals suddenly acting like gun-toting conservatives?

After months of embracing criminal reform, which had a knack for keeping criminals on the streets, California’s elite are taking measures – like panic-buying guns – that show they’re not so different from conservatives after all.

By now, most people are familiar with the extreme liberal reaction to the death of George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer on May 25, 2020. Democratic-controlled cities and states, taking their cue from Black Lives Matter activists, went on a nationwide campaign to purge law enforcement in the belief this would somehow alleviate the bloodshed. Not only did the plan fail spectacularly, but rarely have American streets been so violent.

As the unchallenged capital of liberalism, California has not escaped the fallout. Not by a long shot. The homicide rate has reportedly risen in the Golden State by a shocking 52 percent since 2019. The Hollywood Reporter, citing police data, writes that violent crimes are up 25 percent over the past 12 months. Even in Beverly Hills, the exclusive zip code of top celebrities, perpetrators are showing a level of brazenness never before seen in these parts.

READ MORE:

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/544822-blue-states-criminal-reform/

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President Joe Biden is weighing whether to deliver remarks at the 10th annual National Vigil for All Victims of Gun Violence on Wednesday, just a week before the nation will mark a decade since the Sandy Hook school shooting, according to several people familiar with the planning.

Organized by Newtown Action Alliance Fund and partners, as well as 150 families, survivors, students and advocates will fly in for the vigil in Washington, D.C. this week. Members of Congress and their staff were also invited to attend the event, which will take place at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church on Capitol Hill.

 READ MORE:

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/06/biden-national-gun-violence-vigil-00072632

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