(Reuters) - Walmart Inc said on Wednesday that it was raising the minimum age at which customers could buy firearms and ammunition to 21 years.

The U.S. retailer is also removing items from its website resembling assault-style rifles, including non-lethal airsoft guns and toys, it said in a statement.

A massacre at a Florida high school two weeks ago has reopened a fierce debate over gun control in the United States.</s>Walmart Joins Dick's Sporting Goods In Tighter Limits On Gun Sales

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Updated at 7:40 p.m. ET

Walmart and Dick's Sporting Goods say they won't sell guns to customers under 21, and both are putting new restrictions on ammunition sales.

Dick's Sporting Goods, one of the largest sports retailers in the U.S., has announced it is immediately ending its sales of military-style semi-automatic rifles and is requiring all customers to be older than 21 to buy a firearm at its stores. Additionally, the company no longer will sell high-capacity magazines.

Walmart, which ended sales of modern sporting rifles such as AR-15s in 2015, has announced that it is raising the minimum age for purchasing firearms and ammunition from 18 to 21. The company notes that it does not sell bump stocks, high-capacity magazines and similar accessories.

Walmart is also removing items from its website "resembling assault-style rifles, including nonlethal airsoft guns and toys" — like the air gun Tamir Rice was playing with when he was shot by a Cleveland police officer who thought the 12-year-old was armed.

Dick's Sporting Goods CEO Ed Stack announced the firm's decision on ABC's Good Morning America on Wednesday, the same day that survivors of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School returned to class. Stack said the 19-year-old gunman allegedly behind that massacre, which claimed 17 lives and wounded many more in Parkland, Fla., had purchased a firearm from the retailer last November.

While that the weapon — a shotgun — was not used in the shooting, the CEO said the revelation deeply affected Stack and his colleagues at Dick's.

"We did everything by the book. We did everything that the law required, and still he was able to buy a gun," Stack said. "When we looked at that, we said the systems that are in place across the board just aren't effective enough to keep us from selling a gun like that.

"And so we've decided we're not going to sell the assault-type rifles any longer."

The company, which operates more than 715 locations, already had pulled assault-style weapons from Dick's stores after the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting; now it will also stop selling the weapons at its subsidiary Field & Stream stores.

Stack said the decision to eliminate assault-style rifles is permanent.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with all of the victims and their loved ones," the company said in a statement issued Wednesday. "But thoughts and prayers are not enough. We have tremendous respect and admiration for the students organizing and making their voices heard regarding gun violence in schools and elsewhere in our country.

"We have heard you. The nation has heard you. ... The systems in place are not effective to protect our kids and our citizens."

The statement asserted the company's support for the Second Amendment but continued, "we have to help solve the problem that's in front of us. Gun violence is an epidemic."

In addition to changing its own policies, the company issued a plea to elected officials to enact "common-sense gun reform," specifically calling for the following regulations:

Ban assault-style firearms

Raise the minimum age to purchase firearms to 21

Ban high-capacity magazines, as well as bump stocks — gun accessories that allow semi-automatic rifles to operate like fully automatic weapons

Require universal background checks that include relevant mental health information and previous interactions with the law

Ensure a complete universal database of those banned from buying firearms

Close the private sale and gun show loopholes that waive background checks

With their moves, Dick's and Walmart join a host of major companies that made changes in reaction to the Parkland shooting. As NPR's Amy Held reported last week, many other high-profile companies — from MetLife Insurance and First National Bank of Omaha to Symantec and Hertz — have ended their corporate partnerships with the National Rifle Association.

Those moves have not been without controversy.

Earlier this week, for instance, Georgia Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle threatened to "kill any tax legislation that benefits" Delta Air Lines after the company ended its own relationship with the NRA. Delta, which is based in Atlanta, had announced two days earlier that "we will be requesting that the NRA remove our information from their website" — a decision Cagle described as an attack on conservatives.

Asked about the potential for pushback among gun rights advocates, Stack acknowledged the move "isn't going to make everyone happy. But when we look at what those kids and the parents and the heroes in the school, what they did, our view was: If the kids can be brave enough to organize like this, we can be brave enough to get these [firearms] out of here."

"We're staunch supporters of the Second Amendment," he added. "I'm a gun owner myself. We've just decided that based on what's happened and with these guns, we don't want to be part of this story."</s>CORAOPOLIS, ALLEGHENY COUNTY — Dick’s Sporting Goods, the nation’s largest sporting goods retailer, will stop selling assault-style weapons like the one used in the Parkland, Florida, high school shooting.

The company said it will also raise the minimum age for all gun sales to 21. Dick’s will not sell high-capacity magazines that allow shooters to fire far more rounds than traditional weapons without reloading, as well as other accessories used with weapons similar to the AR-15.

The Parkland shooter, Nikolas Cruz, bought a gun at Dick’s. The company said he did not buy the AR-15 that he used in the school shooting there.

The company stopped selling those military-style semiautomatic weapons in its Dick’s-branded stores after the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in 2012, but it continued to sell those weapons at its 35 Field and Stream stores.

Now, it will pull those weapons from all of its stores.

Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer and a major seller of firearms, announced it would stop selling the military-style semiautomatic weapons in August 2015.

There have been widespread calls for tougher gun control measures in the week since the school shooting.

Below are a series of tweets from Dick’s Sporting Goods about the announcement:</s>Following the mass shooting at a Florida high school, one of the nation's largest sporting goods stores announced Wednesday that it will enact tougher gun sale restrictions — including no longer selling assault-style rifles.

Saying "thoughts and prayers are not enough," Dick's Sporting Goods CEO Edward Stack announced several gun sale restrictions at its over 600 nationwide chains.

"We don't want to be a part of this story any longer," Stack told NBC News in an interview. "We were so disturbed and saddened by what happened down there and watching those kids be so brave to walk out of that school and start to organized for gun reform... if they can be that brave then we can be that brave too."

The chain will stop selling assault-style rifles, end the sale of firearms to buyers under 21 (up from federal minimum age of 18), stop selling high-capacity magazines and continue to never sell controversial bump stocks, the company said.

Walmart on Wednesday also said it would raise the age for buying firearms and ammunition to 21. The mega-chain said it ended the sale of "modern sporting rifles, including the AR-15" in 2015, and does not sell bump stocks of high-capacity magazines. It does not sell handguns except in Alaska. Walmart said it reviewed its firearm sales policies "in light of recent events."

Stack cited "big support" from gun owners who told the company the assault weapon should be "off the market" and that they "don't need" high capacity magazines.

"We're a supporter of the second amendment, I'm a gun owner myself. We're gonna continue this and we understand the vast majority of gun owners are law abiding citizens who use the guns to hunt and target shoot," Stack told NBC News. "There's been too many of these shootings and too many young lives lost."

The move comes as several companies have publicly broken with the NRA and ended NRA member discount programs after the gun lobbying group objected to calls for stricter gun control measures.

The company said it had sold a shotgun to the Parkland shooter last November. Though the gun wasn't used in the shooting, "it could have been."

Stack said this showed that "the systems in place are not sufficient to be able to stop this. So we decided we needed to take a stand here."

Dick's Sporting Goods further called on politicians to adopt its new store policies as laws. It also asked lawmakers to adopt universal background checks with more mental health and law enforcement interaction data, to create a universal database of banned firearm buyers, and stop allowing guns to be sold privately and at gun shows without background checks.

"Some will say these steps can’t guarantee tragedies like Parkland will never happen again," said Stack in the statement. "They may be correct — but if common sense reform is enacted and even one life is saved, it will have been worth it."

Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York, where the company was founded, praised the retailer's move.

"I commend Dick's Sporting Goods, a member of the New York family, for their leadership in taking smart measures to keep weapons out of the wrong hands," Cuomo said in a statement.

The company previously announced in 2012 they would stop selling assault-style rifles following the Sandy Hook school shooting. A year later they resumed selling them at their separate chain of Field & Stream specialty stores. Stack announced Wednesday that all 35 Field & Stream locations would stop selling assault-style rifles.

Stack told NBC News that while "there will be people who will say they don't want to shop at our store any longer," ending the sale of assault-style weapons is "not going to have a real meaningful impact on our business."

Dick's doesn't break out it firearm sales directly in its financial reports. But its stock took a dive after August 2017 when it announced weak results in its hunting segment.

Firearm sales have been down overall since Trump's election. Assault rifle manufacturers and stores selling them have been running deep discounts, with prices dropping to the $300's, to clear off backlogged inventory following up a pre-election run-up. The glut was betting on a buying spree spurred by a Clinton victory that would lead to tighter gun restrictions.

Background checks, a proxy for the hard-to-track gun sales, fell 8 percent last year, the largest drop since the FBI began tracking in 1998.

Dick's Sporting Goods stock price was up by 1.6 percent by mid-day trading.

Walmart in its announcement Wednesday said "We are also removing items from our website resembling assault-style rifles, including nonlethal airsoft guns and toys."</s>On Wednesday night, Walmart announced that it would stop selling firearms and ammunition to people under 21 years old, joining Dick’s Sporting Goods in taking public action over its gun sales policy in response to the recent mass shooting in Parkland, Florida.

“In light of recent events, we’ve taken an opportunity to review our policy on firearm sales,” the retail conglomerate noted in a statement. “Going forward, we are raising the age restriction for purchase of firearms and ammunition to 21 years of age.”

“Our heritage as a company has always been in serving sportsmen and hunters, and we will continue to do so in a responsible way,” the statement concludes. The new policies will be implemented “as quickly as possible.”

The company’s decision comes the same day that Dick’s Sporting Goods CEO Edward Stack announced the sports retailer would stop selling firearms to people under 21 years old and assault-style rifles altogether. Dick’s had already ended the sale of assault rifles after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012 but kept selling the firearm in certain locations.

Walmart, meanwhile, ended the sale of “modern sporting rifles, including the AR-15″—the kind of gun that was used in Parkland—in 2015, citing declining demand at the time, and reiterated in its statement Wednesday that it does not sell “bump stocks, high-capacity magazines and similar accessories.”

The retailers’ decisions mark the latest public stand that corporations have made in the aftermath of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that left 17 dead. A barrage of companies, including Delta Air Lines and Hertz, ended their relationships with the National Rifle Association in the past week. The moves also mirror a call for raising the minimum age for firearm purchases at the federal level, a move President Donald Trump said he supported on Wednesday, standing in contrast to the National Rifle Association.</s>Walmart announced Wednesday that it will no longer sell firearms and ammunition to people younger than 21 and would also remove items resembling assault-style rifles from its website.

The move comes after Dick's Sporting Goods announced earlier in the day that it would restrict the sale of firearms to those under 21 years old. It didn't mention ammunition. Dick's also said it would immediately stop selling assault-style rifles, and its CEO took on the National Rifle Association by demanding tougher gun laws.

Walmart said its decision came after the company reviewed its firearm sales policy in light of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 people. The teenage gunman used an AR-15 rifle. It said it takes "seriously our obligation to be a responsible seller of firearms" and also emphasized its background of serving "serving sportsmen and hunters."

Several major corporations, including MetLife, Hertz and Delta Air Lines, have cut ties with the NRA since the Florida tragedy, but none were retailers that sold guns. The NRA has pushed back aggressively against calls for raising age limits for guns or restricting the sale of assault-style weapons.

Walmart Inc. stopped selling AR-15 guns and other semi-automatic weapons in 2015. It doesn't sell bump stocks, the accessory attached to a semi-automatic gun that makes it easier to fire rounds faster. It also doesn't sell large-capacity magazines. It also says it doesn't sell handguns, except in Alaska.

In announcing the change in policy, the company said it had processes in place to make sure it was applied for online sales.</s>NEW YORK -- Dick's Sporting Goods, the nation's largest sporting goods retailer, will stop selling assault-style weapons like the one used in the Parkland, Florida, high school shooting.

The company said it will also raise the minimum age for all gun sales to 21. Dick's will not sell high-capacity magazines that allow shooters to fire far more rounds than traditional weapons without reloading, as well as other accessories used with weapons similar to the AR-15.

The Parkland shooter, Nikolas Cruz, bought a gun at Dick's. The company said he did not buy the AR-15 that he used in the school shooting there.

The company stopped selling those military-style semiautomatic weapons in its Dick's-branded stores after the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in 2012, but it continued to sell those weapons at its 35 Field and Stream stores.

Now it will pull those weapons from all of its stores.

Walmart, the nation's largest retailer and a major seller of firearms, announced it would stop selling the military-style semiautomatic weapons in August 2015.

There have been widespread calls for tougher gun control measures in the week since the school shooting.

In a letter, Dick's CEO Edward Stack said Parkland students' calls for assault-style weapons bans are the reason the company is making this change.

"We have tremendous respect and admiration for the students organizing and making their voices heard regarding gun violence in schools and elsewhere in our country,' he said in a letter released Wednesday. "We have heard you. The nation has heard you. We support and respect the Second Amendment, and we recognize and appreciate that the vast majority of gun owners in this country are responsible, law-abiding citizens. But we have to help solve the problem that's in front of us."

Stack, 63, is the son of the chain's father. He has been CEO for 34 years. He noted that the Parkland shooter did not use the rifle he bought at Dick's in the shooting, but he said, "It could have been. Clearly this indicates on so many levels that the systems in place are not effective to protect our kids and our citizens."

The company said it has never sold bump stocks, which allow semi-automatic weapons to fire as if they are automatic weapons. Stack called for a nationwide ban on such items.

He also urged Congress to sign into law the restrictions his company has put in place, along with tougher background checks on all gun sales.

"Some will say these steps can't guarantee tragedies like Parkland will never happen again. They may be correct -- but if common sense reform is enacted and even one life is saved, it will have been worth it," he said in the letter.

The company does not break out how much revenue or profit it gets from firearm sales. The chain has a total of 852 stores. Unlike many other traditional retailers, it is adding -- rather than closing -- stores.</s>Dick's Sporting Goods will stop selling assault-style firearms and won't sell guns to people under 21, the company's CEO said Wednesday. The company also issued a plea for "common sense gun reform."

One of the country's major sporting goods chains will no longer sell assault-style firearms and high-capacity magazines. Dick's Sporting Goods will also stop selling guns to consumers under the age of 21. The CEO of the company, Edward Stack, announced this new policy in an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America."

EDWARD STACK: The systems that are in place across the board just aren't effective enough to keep us from selling someone a gun like that. And so we've decided that we're not going to sell the assault-type rifles any longer.

GREENE: NPR's Uri Berliner joins us now to talk more about this.

GREENE: So this seems like a company that is in some ways taking gun restrictions and decisions about how to, you know, patrol the use of guns into their own hands. They're - they make money selling guns. But now they're going to stop selling certain guns to consumers. So what do you think is their calculus here?

BERLINER: Well, you know, the words of Ed Stack today were quite plain and quite emotional. And they were quite direct. And, you know, clearly they're in response to the Parkland shooting and, more than that, to how the students responded to that horrific attack.

And so he said when we take a look at what those kids and parents and the heroes in the school - what they did - our view was that if the kids can be brave enough to organize like this, we can be brave enough to take these guns out of here. So clearly, he's responding in a fairly emotional way.

Now, there's also a business impact that this is going to have. Dick's sells firearms. It's one of the leading sellers of firearms in the country. And many of its customers buy firearms. And they are presumably members of the NRA. So the impact is - we'll see what the impact is. But there is going to be some.

GREENE: So I suppose - I mean, guns are not the only thing that Dick's sells. And we've seen already that some companies have come under enormous pressure, I mean, to sort of distance themselves from the NRA. So could that be the calculation here? They're deciding that, even if they lose some money on guns per se, I mean, this might be overall a win for them in terms of business.

BERLINER: Possibly. So the stock did not tank this morning, as one might have expected if, you know, there was going to be this tremendous backlash. I mean, he said they are prepared for a backlash. And, you know, keep in mind they are - they will no longer sell semiautomatic rifles, so-called assault-style rifles. They will sell other kinds of firearms. And Dick's sells many, many other kinds of products as well.

GREENE: Uri, the company is not just saying that they are going to make this decision about what they sell. They also went so far as to implore lawmakers to act. I mean, this is extraordinary to see a business like this get involved in political advocacy.

BERLINER: Well, what's extraordinary is that it's a business that sells firearms. And they quite directly implored lawmakers to do exactly what they did - raise the minimum age to purchase firearms to 21, ban high-capacity magazines and require - as they also said - require relevant health information and previous interactions with the law.

So they are taking a strong stand, encouraging what they call common-sense gun control.

GREENE: Could this be an inflection point?

BERLINER: Well, when you have a company that is in the business of selling guns speaking out this strongly, it certainly changes the picture.

GREENE: All right, NPR's Uri Berliner on the decision from Dick's Sporting Goods to stop selling certain types of weapons and also call for action from lawmakers this morning.</s>Walmart says it will no longer sell firearms and ammunition to people younger than 21.

The retailer's new policy comes after Dick's Sporting Goods announced earlier Wednesday that it would restrict the sale of firearms to those under 21 years old. It didn't mention ammunition. Walmart says the decision came after a review of its firearm sales policy in light of the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida.

Walmart Inc. stopped selling AR-15 guns, and other semi-automatic weapons in 2015. It doesn't sell bump stocks, the accessory attached to a semi-automatic gun that makes it easier to fire rounds faster. It also doesn't sell large-capacity magazines.

The retailer says it is also removing items resembling assault-style rifles from its website.</s>US retail giant Walmart announced Wednesday that it was raising to 21 its minimum age to buy firearms and ammunition, the latest US company to recalibrate its stance on weapons after a deadly Florida school shooting.

"In light of recent events, we`ve taken an opportunity to review our policy on firearm sales. Going forward, we are raising the age restriction for purchase of firearms and ammunition to 21 years of age," it said in a statement.

"We will update our processes as quickly as possible to implement this change."

The retailer said it was also removing from its website items "resembling assault-style rifles, including nonlethal airsoft guns and toys" but that it would continue to serve "sportsmen and hunters" in a "responsible way."

Walmart said it does not sell bump stocks or high-capacity magazines and in 2015 stopped selling the AR-15 -- the type of gun used by 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz in Parkland, Florida.

The company also said it goes "beyond federal law by requiring customers to pass a background check before purchasing any firearm."

"The law would allow the sale of a firearm if no response to a background check request has been received within three business days, but our policy prohibits the sale until an approval is given," it added.

Earlier on Wednesday, Dick`s Sporting Goods, one of the country`s top sporting goods retailers, also announced it would bar gun sales to any customers under 21 years old and that it would stop selling assault-style rifles.

The US gun industry is suffering a growing corporate backlash in the wake of the February 14 tragedy, with companies cutting ties with the National Rifle Association gun lobbyists that pressure US politicians to prevent any move to restrict gun ownership.
Dick's Sporting Goods and Walmart raise the minimum age for purchasing firearms to 21 and stop selling military-style semi-automatic rifles altogether.