Wal-Mart Fights Bid to Curb Gun Sales
A U.S. appeals court showdown looms next month for Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in a case with potentially broad impact on how much influence investors can have over their companies.
The dispute concerns Wal-Mart’s sales of assault rifles with high-capacity magazines. New York’s Trinity Wall Street church wants shareholders to vote on a resolution calling on Wal-Mart’s board to review management decisions to sell the weapons, as well as other products that could harm the company’s reputation.
A district court sided with Trinity in November and said that Wal-Mart has to include the proposal on the corporate ballots it will send out this spring. Wal-Mart appealed, arguing that the shareholder resolution meddles in regular business decisions and is at odds with decades of guidance from the Securities and Exchange Commission that such affairs are off limits.
What is happening here is simple. A number of anti-gun shareholders of Wal-Mart who oppose guns and want more gun control, are looking to take the guns off the shelves of one of Americas biggest retailers.
Wal-Mart is pushing back of course, saying that shareholders do not have that kind of power. What this shareholder group wants to do is get the measure put on a ballot that will be voted on by all shareholders at a later date.
It is hard to imagine that an overall vote from shareholder would end Wal-Marts sale of firearms, but the game that is being played here is dangerous and could set a precedent for future meddling.
Imagine, if anti-gun groups learned that they could effectively buy up Wal-Mart stocks and then vote to have guns removed from the stores? Wal-Mart understands this, and want to put an end to it now before it gets out of control.
