+
upworthy
More

The largest gun seller in the U.S. is shooting an entire category of firearms off their shelves.

Whether it's about business or politics is irrelevant.

Photo by Mike Mozart/Flickr.


Walmart, the top peddler of guns in the U.S., has decided to stop selling modern sporting rifles (MSRs) and other semi-automatic weapons in fall 2015.

For a country plagued by the world's highest gun violence rate, maybe you're imagining much of the public response looking a little like this:

Sans the gunshots, obvi. GIF from "Up."

But hold your "hoorays" for a moment.

The news may have come and gone relatively unnoticed if it hadn't been reported just one day before a fatal shooting in Roanoke, Virginia.

Roanoke community members participate in a vigil in honor of the two WDBJ-TV journalists gunned down by their former colleague. Photo by Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images.

The dark event, like so many before it, prompted another frantic dig for any sign of hope that gun violence won't last forever, and the Walmart announcement became, to some, a pinhole of light at the end of the tunnel. Tragic happenstance may have drawn public attention to Walmart, but the move hasn't garnered much fanfare.

It's mostly been met by listless debate or weak nods of approval. Although, New York's Trinity Church, a Walmart shareholder that has been pressuring the company to tighten their oversight of gun sales, is "very pleased":

"Trinity Church is very pleased to hear that Walmart will no longer sell the kinds of weapons that have caused such devastation and loss in communities across our country."
— Rev. William Lupfer

Still, while Walmart may no longer sell assault rifles, the company is only replacing the inventory with more products from approved categories, including shotguns, single-shot rifles, and other hunting weapons, all of which have been used in mass shootings.

And we should note that the majority of weapons used in mass shootings in the U.S. were legally obtained — including the handgun used in Roanoke.

Walmart says the decision was about business, not politics.

Photo by Mike Mozart/Flickr.

At least, that's what Walmart spokesperson Kory Lundberg told Forbes:

“Our merchandising decisions are driven largely by customer demand. In our everyday course of doing business, we are continually reviewing and adjusting our product assortment to meet our customers' needs."

But skeptics of the company's stated motives point out that MSRs are among the most popular for civilian gun buyers.

Whether the decision was about business or politics is irrelevant.

Walmart is one of the world's most profitable businesses. They can afford some lost sales on guns. Why they chose to do it and whether it signals a larger shift in the company's stance on guns is unknown.

The more important question to ask is: How many more lives can we afford to lose to gun violence before we come together to end it?

A pitbull stares at the window, looking for the mailman.


Dogs are naturally driven by a sense of purpose and a need for belonging, which are all part of their instinctual pack behavior. When a dog has a job to do, it taps into its needs for structure, purpose, and the feeling of contributing to its pack, which in a domestic setting translates to its human family.

But let’s be honest: In a traditional domestic setting, dogs have fewer chores they can do as they would on a farm or as part of a rescue unit. A doggy mom in Vancouver Island, Canada had fun with her dog’s purposeful uselessness by sharing the 5 “chores” her pitbull-Lab mix does around the house.

Keep ReadingShow less
Representative Image from Canva

Let's not curse any more children with bad names, shall we?

Some parents have no trouble giving their children perfectly unique, very meaningful names that won’t go on to ruin their adulthood. But others…well…they get an A for effort, but might want to consider hiring a baby name professional.

Things of course get even more complicated when one parent becomes attached to a name that they’re partner finds completely off-putting. It almost always leads to a squabble, because the more one parent is against the name, the more the other parent will go to bat for it.

This seemed to be the case for one soon-to-be mom on the Reddit AITA forum recently. Apparently, she was second-guessing her vehement reaction to her husband’s, ahem, avant garde baby name for their daughter, which she called “the worst name ever.”

But honestly, when you hear this name, I think you’ll agree she was totally in the right.

Keep ReadingShow less
Innovation

A student accidentally created a rechargeable battery that could last 400 years

"This thing has been cycling 10,000 cycles and it’s still going." ⚡️⚡️

There's an old saying that luck happens when preparation meets opportunity.

There's no better example of that than a 2016 discovery at the University of California, Irvine, by doctoral student Mya Le Thai. After playing around in the lab, she made a discovery that could lead to a rechargeable battery that could last up to 400 years. That means longer-lasting laptops and smartphones and fewer lithium ion batteries piling up in landfills.

Keep ReadingShow less

A beautiful cruise ship crossing the seas.

Going on a cruise can be an incredible getaway from the stresses of life on the mainland. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t an element of danger when living on a ship 200-plus feet high, traveling up to 35 miles per hour and subject to the whims of the sea.

An average of about 19 people go overboard every year, and only around 28% survive. Cruise ship lawyer Spencer Aronfeld explained the phenomenon in a viral TikTok video, in which he also revealed the secret code the crew uses when tragedy happens.

Keep ReadingShow less
Joy

Kudos to the heroes who had 90 seconds to save lives in the Key Bridge collapse

The loss of 6 lives is tragic, but the dispatch recording shows it could have been so much worse.

Representative image by Gustavo Fring/Pexels

The workers who responded to the Dali's mayday call saved lives with their quick response.

As more details of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore emerge, it's becoming more apparent how much worse this catastrophe could have been.

Just minutes before 1:30am on March 26, shortly after leaving port in Baltimore Harbor, a cargo ship named Dali lost power and control of its steering, sending it careening into a structural pillar on Key Bridge. The crew of the Dali issued a mayday call at 1:26am to alert authorities of the power failure, giving responders crucial moments to prepare for a potential collision. Just 90 seconds later, the ship hit a pylon, triggering a total collapse of the 1.6-mile bridge into the Patapsco River.

Dispatch audio of those moments shows the calm professionalism and quick actions that limited the loss of life in an unexpected situation where every second counted.

Keep ReadingShow less
Joy

Yale's pep band had to miss the NCAA tournament. University of Idaho said, 'We got you.'

In an act of true sportsmanship, the Vandal band learned Yale's fight song, wore their gear and cheered them on.

Courtesy of University of Idaho

The Idaho Vandals answered the call when Yale needed a pep band.

Yale University and the University of Idaho could not be more different. Ivy League vs. state school. East Coast vs. Pacific Northwest. City vs. farm town. But in the first two rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament, extenuating circumstances brought them together as one, with the Bulldogs and the Vandals becoming the "Vandogs" for a weekend.

When Yale made it to the March Madness tournament, members of the school's pep band had already committed to other travel plans during spring break. They couldn't gather enough members to make the trek across the country to Spokane, Washington, so the Yale Bulldogs were left without their fight song unless other arrangements could be made.

When University of Idaho athletic band director Spencer Martin got wind of the need less than a week before Yale's game against Auburn, he sent out a message to his band members asking if anyone would be interested in stepping in. The response was a wave of immediate yeses, so Martin got to work arranging instruments and the students dedicated themselves to learning Yale's fight song and other traditional Yale pep songs.

Keep ReadingShow less