Ammo dispensers in US spark controversy

If you live in Oklahoma or Alabama, you can now pick up baby formula along with a cartridge or two of bullets from your neighborhood grocery store.

Instead of selling drinks, candy and chips usually found in vending machines, Texas-based American Rounds is putting machines selling ammunition in grocery stores.

Included are various firearm calibers and ammo for rifles, shotguns and handguns, according to American Rounds.

In a video posted on the company's website, Chief Executive Grand Magers said the first such machine was installed in November in Pell City, Alabama.

The website showed six such vending machines have been installed at supermarkets in Alabama and Oklahoma. Two others are planned soon for stores in North Texas and Colorado.

A camera in the machine scans the customer's face to verify the buyer is 21 or older and matches the ID. The machine then dispenses the cartridge.

Magers said the company is changing the landscape of ammunition sales to "make it more available" by moving them to grocery and convenience stores. He said the approach is safer because at a traditional sporting goods store, ammunition "sits on the shelf, it's very accessible, and there is a high rate of theft".

The innovative technology has sparked fear in gun control advocates, Texas TV station FOX 7 reported.

"In a country where guns are the leading cause of death for children and teens, Texas included, and in a state that has experienced some of the most high-profile mass shootings in recent years, expanding gun access and, in this case, ammunition access is the wrong direction," the report quoted Nicole Golden, executive director of nonprofit Texas Gun Sense, as saying.

Joshua Horwitz, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, told The New York Times there were too many unknowns about how the machines could affect public safety to be installing them in stores without input from stakeholders, including legislators, law enforcement and Second Amendment supporters.

'Wrong place'

Nick Suplina, senior vice-president for law and policy at nonprofit Everytown for Gun Safety, told The Associated Press that ammunition does not belong in a grocery store.

"Innovations that make ammunition sales more secure via facial recognition, age verification and the tracking of serial sales are promising safety measures that belong in gun stores, not in the place where you buy your kids milk," he said.

"In a country awash with guns and ammo, where guns are the leading cause of deaths for kids, we don't need to further normalize the sale and promotion of these products."

A Houston gun owner self-identified as Nancy B. said she would try the vending machine at least out of curiosity if it were available near her.

She said she normally buys ammunition from either local dealers or online. However, she has some misgivings. Nancy B. said a customer needs to know what ammunition to buy because the machine shows only pictures.

She also had a more serious concern, "What if some bad actors break the machine and rob all the ammo?"

Whether selling ammunition in a grocery store is legal has been questioned. A grocery store in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, home to the University of Alabama, recently removed such a machine after the City Council questioned it, local media reported.

"I got some calls about ammunition being sold in grocery stores, the vending machines," Tuscaloosa Councilman Kip Tyner said before a council meeting, the report said. "I thought it was a lie. I thought it was a joke but it's not."

The local grocery manager said the removal was because of low sales.

So far, interest in the vending machines has come mostly from rural communities with small populations, Magers told the AP. For example, one vending machine was installed in Lindsay, Oklahoma, where the population is about 3,000.

"Someone in that community might have to drive an hour or an hour and a half to get supplied if they want to go hunting, for instance," he said. "Our grocery stores, they wanted to be able to offer their customer another category that they felt like would be popular."

Agencies contributed to this story.