Earlier this week, mainstream news outlets surveyed a policy by a large UK retail book store W.H. Smith of treating gun and hunting publications the same as pornography.
The policy prompted a response from the International Association for the Protection of Civilian Arms Rights (IAPCAR) denouncing the move by the bookstore. Some blogs and other news outlets picked up the story and W.H. Smith is now attempting to do some damage control.
An official response from W.H. Smith (read below) essentially tries to pass the buck. The excuse was that in the past some of the magazines allegedly offered free deals on “firearms related products” that may be illegal to sell to youngsters in the UK.
What are these horrible and dangerous items in question? Well, stuff like BB pellets, and knives. Granted knives can be lethal; however, if a youngster wanted to acquire a knife the first place they would probably look is the family kitchen.
As another olive branch, the official statement offered that the policy is not new. An odd way to justify the policy and ignore the entire underlining principles of the matter.
The official statement is below:
“Our till prompt process has been in place for over 6 years and has never previously generated any customer complaints. In this respect, we have made no recent changes to these procedures. The introduction of till prompts with regards to certain shooting titles originated from the fact that a number of these publications included ‘cover mounts’ attached to the front of the magazine, that have historically included certain firearm related products. With regard to the application of these procedures across our store chain, these till prompts have only been applied to a section of gun related and shooting titles, in respect of a limited number of publications.
We continually look at all store procedures, including the use of till prompts, to determine whether they are appropriate in light of changing customer needs, legislative amendments and other regulatory monitoring. Our desire going forwards is to work more closely with the shooting magazine publishers to address the concerns that have been highlighted by all of the customers who have recently contacted us, in order to ensure that appropriate monitoring procedures can be applied, prior to these publications being sent to the store for placing on sale.”
