PORTLAND, Ore. \u2014 Superstore company Fred Meyer will stop selling guns and ammunition.<\/p>\n
The Portland, Oregon,-based chain in a statement Friday said it made the decision after evaluating customer preferences. The company sells guns at nearly 45 of its more than 130 stores in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Alaska.<\/p>\n
\u201cFred Meyer has made a business decision to exit the firearms category,\u201d the company said. \u201cWe are currently working on plans to responsibly phase out sales of firearms and ammunition.\u201d<\/p>\n
The company, a subsidiary of Cincinnati, Ohio,-based Kroger Co., didn\u2019t give a timeline.<\/p>\n
Fred Meyer stores sell a range of goods that include groceries, clothing, electronics, outdoor equipment, furniture and jewelry. Stores also include pharmacies.<\/p>\n
The company said the firearms category represents about $7 million annually of its revenue and sales have been declining.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe made the decision early last week after evaluating changing customer preferences and the fact that we\u2019ve been steadily reducing this category in our Fred Meyer stores over the last several years due to softening consumer demand,\u201d the company said. \u201cMore recently we have been transitioning away from gun departments as a result of our ongoing work to optimize space in our Fred Meyer stores.\u201d<\/p>\n
Following last month\u2019s high school shooting in Parkland, Florida that left 17 people dead, Fred Meyer said it would stop selling firearms to anyone under 21. The company had already stopped selling assault-style guns several years ago, except in Alaska.<\/p>\n
Fred Meyer did not mention the school shooting in its statement Friday.<\/p>\n
Other stores announced in the wake of that shooting that they would stop selling guns to anyone under 21 including Walmart Inc. and L.L. Bean. Dick\u2019s Sporting Goods recently banned sales of assault rifles.<\/p>\n
Several outdoor chains, including Bass Pro Shops, Cabela\u2019s, Gander Outdoors and Academy Sports, continue to sell assault-style rifles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PORTLAND, Ore. \u2014 Superstore company Fred Meyer will stop selling guns and ammunition. The Portland, Oregon,-based chain in a statement Friday said it made the decision after evaluating customer preferences. The company sells guns at nearly 45 of its more than 130 stores in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Alaska. \u201cFred Meyer has made a business<\/a> […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":15617,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-15616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15616"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=15616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}