Trinity Church vs. WalMart on sexy music and 10 round mags

Oh yeah, because Walmart really cares about "Family Values". They are a business trying to make money. They will sell whatever people are buying, and it so happens that people in this country like guns, sex and rock n' roll!!! LOL
 
Trinity Church was founded in the early 18th Century via a grant from Queen Anne. Their budget is in the upper nine figures. If they wanted to turn their eye to gun control, they could outspend the Joyce Foundation. Presiding Bishop Schori provided written testimony favorable to gun control to VP Biden's panel back in early 2013.

So, uh, yeah. This makes me a little uncomfortable.

Of course, if we want to make WalMart family safe, we can start by looking at the fattening and loathsome food they sell, the contents of their pharmacy department, and many other aspects of their business.
 
The amusing thing to me is that WMT before all this kerfuffle never carried much of any guns that weren't the politically correct sort. Hunting rifles and shotguns, plinking .22LRs, that was pretty much it (years ago they sold handguns, but they haven't done that in 20 years or so around here).

Then they removed all guns a while back. Then they brought them back and they have some pretty impressive deals going on decent quality AR-15s.

The fact is, if guns weren't a money maker then Walmart wouldn't sell them. If customers weren't happily buying ARs at a profit from them, they'd not be for sale. They know how much profit per sq. ft. EVERYTHING makes in that store. If there's something more profitable to be sold in that space then they will make the change and sell the other item. That they are now selling Colt and Sig AR-15s is a sign that they are quite profitable for Walmart to be selling. If they are profitable, then people are voting with their dollars for the guns to be there.

That's going to mean more than some bunch up in New England where there likely aren't even all that many Walmarts to begin with.
 
The lawsuit is in Delaware. Delaware is very corporation friendly. Not a chance that this suit is going anywhere.
 
I own a few shares of WMT. Maybe I should start up a movement at the shareholder's meeting to force Wallyworld to start selling more .22 ammo. :eek: I understand the church owns 10 shares of stock. See you and raise.
 
Technosavant,
Your info about walmart is a little off. They stopped selling handguns because they couldn't keep employees with the skills/knowledge to fill out the BATFE paperwork reliably. BATFE started hassling them and they stopped selling handguns. ATFE layed off. Almost every other big box non-sporting goods store stopped selling entirely. The only one I can think of still selling is ACE Hardware at limited stores and they are some sort of franchise.
For the ratio of square footage guns take up, the extra paperwork, and the amount they sell they are very unprofitable for walmart. A while back they cut items with bad ratios. This included long guns in many stores. They found people who bought other things wanted to look at the things the cut or wanted to buy both and started going places that had both. They have been bringing many of the cut products back. It doesn't hurt that gun sales have gone through the roof the last 6 years. I don't think Walmart has ever had a gun policy that was politically motivated beyond not wanting to deal with ATFE audits they couldn't satisfy.
Medal Guy,
What about a housebrand 22lr and they could finance the start-up of a new manufacturer.
 
According to the article, the Church has $2000 of Walmart stock. Same article said how the church has given millions in aid to poor places. And that Walmart does over 700 BILLION in business.

And they are suing because Walmart doesn't want to listen (have distributed) their proxy proposal. And Walmart is within SEC rules to do this.

While I'm not in business, why would the board of a billion dollar company have to pay attention to every crackpot with $2000 worth of stock? I wouldn't.

Now, if they held $80 Million in stock, that would be a different matter, now wouldn't it?
 
Well, the article said 'at least $2,000 worth of Wal-Mart shares' so maybe more...some companies and people don't ever want to reveal a real dollar amount.

So Trinity is against Walmart's guns with high cap magazine and
music “that depicts violence or sex,”
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Well. If they ever got over to the DVD section of a Walmart they'd probably get a case of the vapors. (Wonder why movies weren't mentioned?)
 
Wonder why movies weren't mentioned?
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My guess would be that movies have 'ratings' for their intended viewing audience. It's sort of hard to go after a rated 'R' movie for having certain content, when the rating is there for having that content in the first place. If you don't want your family seeing that content, then don't buy rated 'R' movies for them. Same goes for video games, which Wal-Mart also sells, and it doesn't seem like they're being attacked either. I'm sure there's more 'shoot 'em up' video games at Walmart than 'high cap mags.'

Music, OTOH usually doesn't have such ratings. Sometimes they will have an "explicit content" warning, but it's much easier to go after music, because it generally doesn't have these ratings in place. I don't think there's an age limit, when buying music. You don't need to be 18+ to buy a hip hop CD, while you generally do need to have ID to purchase 'M' rated games, and 'R' rated movies. If they added the same rating to music, I'm sure this group would have nothing to whine about, because minors wouldn't be able to purchase this music, and parents can choose whether or not to buy this music for their families. I don't agree with what they're doing, but this is my opinion for why they chose to attack what they did, and didn't attack anything else. The whole thing is silly to me. Why do groups feel like they have to protect the masses? No one is forcing any of this stuff into people's hands, they can choose whether or not to buy this 'sexy music' and Wal-mart or any other place is doing nothing wrong by selling it.


Also what counts as 'sexy music' does it have to lyrics that depict sex, or does Smooth Jazz, and saxophone music count? That music sounds pretty 'sexy' to my ears. :p
 
As I understand the article, the church isn't bringing suit because WALMART is selling "bad" guns & music, they are bringing suit because WALMART isn't allowing them to circulate their petition (about not selling bad guns& music) to the shareholders.

That is a slightly different matter.
 
Okay, yeah, I said I wouldn't discuss this anymore... oh well.

DaleA said:
Wonder why movies weren't mentioned?
JD0x0 said:
My guess would be that movies have 'ratings' for their intended viewing audience... Same goes for video games, which Wal-Mart also sells, and it doesn't seem like they're being attacked either. I'm sure there's more 'shoot 'em up' video games at Walmart than 'high cap mags.
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Another distinct possibility for both music AND guns is that, relative to movies, they're a much smaller source of revenue both for Wal-Mart AND the companies producing them. Thus, the church may think that it's less likely that Wal-Mart and/or the producers will put up a big fight.

As pointed out earlier, Wal-Mart only sells guns in certain stores. The music sections in my local Wally Worlds have drastically shrank during the past 5-6 years, and furthermore, I've been told* that Wal-Mart's music sections are now stocked by outside contract vendors to yield more flexibility in tailoring the (shrinking) selection to each local store; if true, the store's profit margin on music has to be razor-thin, as the prices have dropped, while the vendor has to make money too. [*The person who told me this worked for a similar vendor that services Best Buy.]
DaleA said:
If they added the same [movie-style] rating to music, I'm sure this group would have nothing to whine about, because minors wouldn't be able to purchase this music, and parents can choose whether or not to buy this music for their families.
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The problems are (a) the music industry has fought ratings for years, and only agreed to the current black "Parental Advisory" labels after being dragged into it kicking and screaming; and (b) the music industry is either in steep decline or going through an exciting transition- depending on who you ask- due to Web streaming and iTunes being a less lucrative revenue source than sales of little plastic discs (or big vinyl ones). IOW they're in no mood to compromise on an issue that could negatively affect their already declining sales.

Again, the church may feel that Wal-Mart will simply drop the offensive artists or kill the CD section altogether rather than fight. [Pardon the thread veer. :)]
 
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WMT closed today at just under $77 a share so that means the church owns about 26 shares. I'll still see that and raise considerably. That's a pretty small stake, but then at a stockholders' meeting, they are supposed to listen to every stockowner. I hope they listen and then say thanks for your suggestion and we'll take it under consideration, and move on.
 
but then at a stockholders' meeting, they are supposed to listen to every stockowner. I hope they listen and then say thanks for your suggestion and we'll take it under consideration, and move on.
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What I'm getting from the report is that WalMart did this, and the minor stockholder (the Trinity Church) didn't like the answer they got, and sued.
 
a) Let's not assume they only own $2000 worth of shares; that's not what the article says. The article says "at least 2000 shares".

b) Anyone want to bet against Bloomberg being behind this? ....Trinity Church, NYC, "hey, how about I donate some money to you if you buy Walmart stock and then raise a stink about selling guns and bad music?"...we'll know for sure if they try to stop Walmart from selling soda pop.

c) Stand your ground Walmart. I own a few shares myself and they're money-makers. I'd hate to have to sell them back on principles.
 
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