Ammo vending machines come to Southern grocery stores: NPR

Adults in several US states can now buy gun ammo from AI-powered vending machines right at their local grocery store.

The company that makes them argues that it’s a safer way to sell ammunition than online or off the shelf. But experts have raised concerns about its increased availability in a country where gun violence is already widespread.

American Rounds LLC currently has its “automated retail ammo vending machines” in eight supermarkets across Alabama, Oklahoma and Texas (at least one was removed earlier this month from an Alabama location, according to news reports local). They’re launching another this week in Colorado and say many more are on the way.

“We had requests in Hawaii, requests in Alaska, from California to Florida and every state in between for the most part,” CEO Grant Magers told NPR. “We currently have about 200 grocery stores that we are working on to fulfill orders on the machines.”

The Dallas-based company, which Magers says has about 10 employees, was in the national media spotlight this month. But it has been supplying stores with vending machines since November 2023, when it installed its first at a Fresh Value location in Pell City, Ala.

Magers said he was approached earlier that year by “some strategic partners that we had done business with in another space” who were interested in possibly using high-tech vending machines to sell ammunition in stores food. His team set out to investigate the landscape.

“Ammunition … is traditionally sold off the shelf,” he said. “[It] it just sits open like a cereal box in a grocery store.”

Federal law prohibits dealers from selling handgun ammunition to anyone under 21 and long gun ammunition to anyone under 18.

The same federal laws that disqualify people from accessing firearms based on things like their criminal history also apply to ammunition, though they don’t require sellers to conduct background checks, according to Giffords, a gun control research and advocacy center. weapons. Only a handful of states have passed laws requiring background checks or licenses to purchase ammunition.

Magers said the way ammunition is currently sold — online and on the shelves of gun stores, sporting goods stores and retailers — makes it easy for people to steal it and for minors to order it. illegally behind the keyboard.

“When we looked at the market, we wanted to create a safer environment for ammunition while still respecting the integrity of the 2A community,” he said, referring to the Second Amendment.

Magers admits that not everyone will see self-serve ammo machines in grocery stores as a step forward. But he says they’re not like the Redbox booths or old-school vending machines that many people might picture.

Instead, he describes them as 2,000-pound, triple-sealed, double-walled steel boxes installed indoors, monitored by security cameras and refilled only by members of his vetted staff.

A federal license is not required to sell ammunition, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) said in a statement to NPR. It added that commercial sales “must comply with state laws as well as any applicable federal laws.”

Magers says the company currently has no plans to use the technology for background checks, but will continue to follow federal, state and local laws.

“If you look at the way it’s currently sold in our country, we’re the safest and most secure method of retailing ammunition on the market today,” Magers adds.

Gun violence prevention researchers and gun control advocates are not convinced.

Kris Brown, president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said in a statement that stores that agree to cut machines put their customers and communities at risk and also open the door to legal liability.

“We need to get these machines out of our grocery stores and we need to do it now,” she added.

Machines scan faces and IDs to check customers’ ages

The machines carry top brands of shotguns, rifles and pistols that are commonly available at other retailers, Magers says. Some inventories vary by location based on the stage of the hunting season and what is popular in specific communities.

“We had someone tell us that they wanted a .410 shotgun in this particular community because a lot of people there are going to use it for machinery and snakes and things like that that come onto their property,” he explained.

Vending machines use touch screen technology: shoppers can move around and choose which products they want.

To check in they have to scan their ID, which Magers says serves to both verify that they’re of age (which is 21 on all American Rounds machines) and that their ID isn’t fake. or expired.

The machine then does a facial recognition scan to match the shopper’s face to their ID – otherwise, the transaction is cancelled. Magers points out that the company does not store or sell that data.

The machines are all in supermarkets in rural areas, Magers says, where hunters would otherwise have to drive an hour or more to buy ammunition at a big box store. He says the vending machines have increased foot traffic at local grocery stores and also seem to be selling well.

The company restocks cars every two to four weeks depending on their location, he added.

Magers says “98%” of the feedback his team has received is positive.

“We’re getting up to 20 emails an hour full support,” he said, adding that machine requests come from individual grocery store locations as well as larger groups.

Magers estimates the company can turn out 20 cars a month at current staffing levels, but is trying to scale up quickly — including raising money — to meet that demand.

He dreams of eventually expanding the drive’s offerings to include things like hunting and fishing licenses and National Rifle Association memberships, and says some of those could be available by the end of this year.

Experts say the technology has both risk and promise

Experts in gun violence prevention and cybersecurity tell NPR they have their doubts about vending machines.

“I’m not sure what problem the company is solving that wouldn’t be solved by responsible ownership of any facility that sells ammunition,” says George Tita, a professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California, Irvine.

He says the solution to minors buying ammunition may be to not sell it online or illegally in the first place, “instead of facial recognition and an ID at your local grocery store.”

Plus, he says, vending machines raise a whole new set of concerns. For example, they may sell ammunition to people who are not legally allowed to own guns, such as those convicted of felonies or certain domestic violence crimes.

And they can’t watch for signs of distress or other warnings that a customer might use the ammunition to hurt themselves or others.

“A vending machine won’t be able to say, ‘Hey, how are you?’ or ‘Why do you need this ammo?'” Tita added.

Similar concerns were echoed by Mar Miller, who was shopping at a Super C-Mart in Noble, Okla., that houses one such machine.

“So if they look, who knows, modified or crazy,” Miller told member station KOSU. “I mean, that’s something you can judge as a person better than a computer.”

Experts say it’s just as important to regulate ammunition as the firearms themselves.

“Obviously, you can’t shoot a gun without ammunition,” says Chethan Sathya, director of the Center for Gun Violence Prevention at Northwell Health.

Sathya says the AI-imposed age requirement of vending machines could potentially be help keep ammunition out of the wrong hands.

“This is in no way a substitute for background checks, which is a common-sense public health policy,” he says. “But it could be a staggered approach to at least understanding identity and making sure people are of the right age.”

As long as the machines work, that is.

Andrew Whaley, senior technical director at Norwegian cybersecurity firm Promon, told Business Insider that the technology is likely not 100% immune to hackers or bugs, which could facilitate illegal transactions.

“The simple truth is, as retailers continue to digitize services like this and imbue them with advanced technology, they inevitably widen the attack surface for cybercriminals, transforming every innovation into a potential vulnerability ,” he said, adding that bad actors could theoretically benefit. for any vulnerability in the scanner to bypass its security measures.

In general, making ammunition accessible in more places is dangerous from a public safety perspective, Sathya says, pointing to studies showing that increased availability of firearms and ammunition leads to higher rates of injury and death. related to them.

“If it’s increasing access to ammunition and that’s all much easier for someone to go to their corner store and buy it, it’s kind of common sense that some gunshot injuries and death rates are going to go up, like suicides, mass public shootings, and gunshot wounds. unintentional or certain types of killings,” he added.

The United States is already struggling with high rates of gun violence, prompting the surgeon general to declare it a public health crisis just last month. The country saw an estimated 8,934 murders, 17,060 injuries and 284 mass shootings in 2024 alone, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive.

In theory, Sathya says, the machines could do even more to promote responsible gun ownership — like running background checks and including information on how to use and store ammunition safely.

“Having firearms stored separately from ammunition, unloaded and locked up so that children and the elderly and you can’t accidentally injure someone or someone from committing suicide or domestic homicide, that’s important, he added. “So I think there’s an opportunity there, if this company wants to take it, to actually increase firearms safety and public health.”