Well boys and girls, there once was a man named Lewis Carroll, the creator of Alice in Wonderland, who would be bemused as Walmart re-creates some of his other fanciful characters, starting with CEO Doug McMillon, The Walmart Jabberwock.
Heretofore relatively unknown politically, save for attempting to head off an Arkansas religious freedom law, Dougie has galumphed into view, breathed mighty fire, and with a high-minded and pious speech declared that the recent tragedies at Walmart could be countered by banning the sale of .223 caliber ammunition!
Yes! And then he decreed that law-abiding citizens could not exercise their Second Amendment right to bear arms in his stores! All by himself!
Surely, that would stop the violence!
Delighted with his frabjous day, he galumphed back to his Bentonville lair and met with the Mad Hatters of the Walmart marketing department.
Could it be that those Mad Hatters in marketing, crazed from squinting beneath green visors at their demographic calculations, had fed their $19-million-a-year boss a load of boojum droppings?
Could it be that sheer cynicism had driven their decision to do something, no matter how doltish?
Could it be that Walmart demographers, seeing two high profile tragedies involving guns and Walmart, although unconnected except for the words “guns” and “Walmart,” had coldly and precisely calculated that a high-profile but meaningless gyre would defuse the connection in the public’s mind?
But Alas! The Fact Thing.
It turns out that Dougie-the-Jabberwock didn’t bother to find out that the gunman in El Paso wasn’t using .223-caliber ammunition from an AR rifle at all!
The lunatic was, in fact, shooting a completely different, semi-automatic Romanian 7.62x39mm WASR-10, an AK-47 knockoff.
But Dougie-the-Jabberwock and his know-nothing-but-do-something (with minimum loss in profit) Walmart marketing folks foolishly knee-jerked, without checking the facts, and chose the AR rifle and its .223 ammunition as the root of all evil, anyway!
Yup, they sure did.
And ironically, while that .223 ammunition is made in America, Walmart continues to sell Tula 7.62 x 39mm AK-47 ammunition . . . made in Russia.
So you see, boys and girls, even though Walmart is the largest corporation in the world with $514 billion in revenue, and 2.2 million employees, Lewis Carroll surely would be chortling over the mimsy performance of the slithy folks in Bentonville, unfolding as if through the looking glass. And waiting for Dougie’s next galumph . . .