The Kroger Company, which has more than 2,000 locations in the U.S., does not sell firearms. You’d think otherwise from reading the news Thursday morning. Funny thing — there’s been a lot of this going around lately.
CBS News had the breaking alert: “Kroger, the nation’s biggest grocery chain, will no longer sell guns to people under 21 years of age, the company says.” The Wall Street Journal claimed elsewhere: “Kroger to Stop Selling Guns to Buyers Under 21.” Time magazine said, “Kroger Will No Longer Sell Guns to People Under 21.”
Having heard this, long-time Kroger shoppers are probably wondering how they’ve managed to miss the firearms section this whole time. The simple answer is: They haven’t. Kroger stores do not sell firearms or ammunition. Rather, Kroger’s sister company, the West Coast-based Fred Meyer (which operates in Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington state), does.
Kroger merged with Fred Meyer in 1999, making it the nation’s largest grocery chain. Forty-three Fred Meyer stores sell firearms and ammunition. However, the group’s Oregon, Washington, and Idaho stores stopped selling AR-15-style rifles a few years back. Alaska was the only state where a Fred Meyer customer could get something like that, except now the company says its shops in the “Last Frontier” state will no longer accept those special orders.
“Recent events demonstrate the need for additional action on the part of responsible gun retailers,” a Kroger spokesman said Thursday.
So, even if there’s some sense in which it is technically inaccurate to say Kroger will no longer sell guns or ammunition to people younger than 21, it is not really true, and it is certainly at least misleading. There’s a reason why social media users were confused Thursday morning.
Here’s an example of a correct, non-misleading Kroger headline, courtesy Bloomberg News: “Kroger’s Fred Meyer stores stop selling guns to people under 21.” See? That wasn’t so hard.
