Shoppers at select grocery stores in the South can pick up something new: ammunition dispensed from a high-tech vending machine that features a wide variety of 12-gauge shotgun shells and 9mm cartridges.
The company behind the machines, American Rounds, has installed the dispensers in about 10 grocery stores in Alabama, Oklahoma and Texas and is planning to expand to Colorado. Shoppers must be at least 21 years old, which the machine verifies by reading IDs and then using facial recognition technology to ensure the shopper’s face and ID match. They do not take cash and only accept credit cards.
Grant Magers, CEO of American Rounds, says the process distributors go through to make sure buyers are who they say they are makes them perhaps the safest way to sell ammunition. “People have in their mind the old vending machine type that drops a candy bar or a bag of chips,” he said. “These don’t work like that.”
The first ammo dispensing machine was installed at a Fresh Value grocery store in Pell City, Alabama, in November 2023, Magers said. American Rounds expanded to a Lowe’s Market in Canyon Lakes, Texas, by the end of June.
Fresh Value, Lowe’s Market and Super C Mart, the third grocery chain with the machines, did not respond to requests for comment.
The machines weigh 2,000 pounds, Magers said, and the ammunition is kept behind layers of sealed steel.
Magers argues that keeping ammunition in 2,000-pound machines behind steel — and distributing it only to verified buyers — makes the rounds much safer than buying them at gun stores. Thieves can pick pockets like “a piece of bread off the shelf,” he said, and online sellers only verify ages by asking someone to put a tick in a box.
“When you put it in context in terms of availability, we’re the safest and most secure in the market, and that’s what we want,” he said. “We’re improving our communities by being responsible about how we sell ammunition.”
Experts warn that dispensers can make it easier for criminals to obtain ammunition.
“If it was a system that did a background check, then we could be talking about a system that stops illegal sales,” said David Pucino, legal director for the Giffords Law Center, the anti-gun violence policy arm of the organization. started by former Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, a survivor of a mass shooting. “Their achievement is that they’re making it easier and easier to find ammunition, no questions asked.”
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Where are the dispensers?
The stores are mostly in rural areas, Magers said, where gun owners might otherwise have to drive an hour to buy ammunition at the nearest sporting goods store.
Staff at seven stores known to have the cars declined to comment. Some hung up on a reporter. Vicki Briscoe, a shift manager at the original location in Alabama, said the car was “very popular” with local customers before declining to comment further.
American Rounds restocks cars every two weeks to a month, Magers said.
Ammunition for sale varies by season, with turkey rounds in stock during turkey season, for example, and 10-point buck rounds available in deer season.
According to Magers, distributors do not store customer data.
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Are they safe?
The machines may go further than local laws that don’t require ID to buy ammunition, but that doesn’t make them an improvement, according to Pucino.
“It’s exploiting and reflecting massive loopholes in our federal law,” he said. People who can’t legally buy guns can’t buy ammunition, according to federal regulation, but sellers don’t have to run background checks.
“You have the industry exploiting loopholes in the law, ostensibly for the purpose of preventing theft, but potentially going the other way and removing all controls without worrying that ammunition in the wrong hands could kill people.”
Some local laws go further than federal regulations: Ammunition sellers in Sacramento, for example, must keep sales records, which prosecutors have used to identify illegal purchases, according to the Giffords Law Center; Tennessee law prohibits vendors from selling to intoxicated people.
“It’s good that it requires IDs or age verification; none of these things are required,” Pucino said. “But what they’re not doing is having human intervention to check for red flags.”