As always, in the US, major social and cultural change is directed by developments in the market. In the case of the gun control issue, we find that no matter who is killed (white children, white fans of country music, black people at a football game, Latinos at a garlic festival), and how many are killed (thousands), the American political system—which is run by those who are supported by the NRA—can, on its own will, do next to nothing to pass laws to lessen or end what's obviously a major public health crisis. We have been stuck in this situation for a long time. And if it were not for a shift in the economic realm, it is likely we would never move from this position (demands for reform/nothing being done) until the end of this civilization (mass shooting after mass shooting—not to mention the women shot dead in domestic situations). And what is the economic shift that will have consequences for the culture of liberal gun ownership in our country? It turns out to be Amazon.com.

The New Yorkers' Adam Gopnik completely misread Walmart's decision to ban "open carry" in its stores as an expression of a democratic impulse that the GOP-controlled political system is cold to.

Gopnik writes:

Gun massacres, in addition to the death and horror that they bring, are reshaping our culture in ways so destructive— producing perverse exercises in school architecture and the constant, usually needless, but real panic in parents’ hearts—that to register their damage even in terms of the lives lost is insufficient. (That damage is as incomprehensible as it is real—as one chronicle shows, there have been more mass shootings this year than there have been days in the calendar.)

Yet we can see some small signs that the inevitable process of democratic reform—in which legislation is a lagging, not a leading, indicator, and public outrage eventually directs political conduct more than political conduct can defeat public outrage—is underway. This week’s announcement that Walmart, the second-largest retailer in the world, will end the sale of some kinds of ammunition—and end the sale of handguns in Alaska, the only state where it still sells them—might seem pitifully minimal to visitors from other countries, not least because it was paired with a “request” that customers in the states that allow open carry refrain from openly bringing guns into Walmart stores.

The sad news is that this change in store policy has nothing to do with the final awakening of the "inevitable process of democratic reform." No. Nothing like that at all. If one wants to make sense of Walmart's decision, all they need to ask are the only two questions that matter in economics: Who and why?

The who is Walmart (and Kroger, a corporation that also announced a ban of "open carry"). The bread-and-butter locus of this going concern is still the good old brick-and-mortar. Think about it. Walmart's revenues are generated by the gathering of the public in public. And what has the American Psychological Association (APA) recently determined about the impact of mass shootings on the public's psyche in the US? That "a third of U.S. adults are so stressed by the prospect of mass shootings that they avoid visiting certain places or attending certain events."

The finding of this study:

...An overwhelming majority of American adults—79% — experience some amount of stress related to mass shootings. A third of the 2,000 respondents said that fear was so great they avoid going to certain places or events, and almost a quarter said they’ve changed their lives due to fear of mass shootings.

And here we have in plain sight, the why. This report will alarm the CEOs of corporations that depend on people getting out of their homes and buying stuff in public spaces. But who benefits from people not leaving their homes and conducting their buying at home? Seattle's Amazon. The rise in mass shootings might be ignored by the party, the GOP, that dominates American politics and follows to a tee the commands of the NRA. But the CEO of a Walmart or a Kroger is insane to read the American Psychological Association's findings and not understand the consequences on its business model and future profits. People will stay at home and shop at home because there is, for their consumption needs, an online retailer that's massive and has the resources to deliver goods cheaply and quickly to doorsteps. Why deal with the open carry nonsense, and GOP inaction, when you can stay away from public spaces that seem to attract killers with military-grade weapons?

Gopnik, however, is correct to state that the debates for sensible gun controls ignore how gun violence impacts people of color much more than white Americans. The thing that's freaking out Walmart are the seemingly non-stop images of white people committing, fleeing from, and dying in much-publicized mass shootings.