The nation’s largest grocery chain sells guns from 44 of its Fred Meyer stores in the West, but said Thursday that it’s become clear that gun retail outlets must go beyond what current U.S. laws requires.
The change comes one day after Walmart and Dick’s Sporting Goods, both prominent gun sellers, tightened their company policy, and also a day after students returned to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida for the first time since a troubled teenager killed 17 people there, mostly children.
Companies like Dick’s had already changed gun-sale policies in the wake of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut, but the most recent school shooting in Parkland, Florida, has opened a fissure between a portion of corporate America and organizations like the National Rifle Association.