(IntegrityPress.org) – Gone are the days of vending machines filled with cigarettes at every corner bar, but get ready for vending machines that will take your cash (or card, or phone, or who knows what tomorrow) and give you back some bullets.
A startup company in Texas, American Rounds, is rolling out their new Automated Ammo Retail Machines (AARM, because everything must have an abbreviation). But these aren’t your grandfather’s old vending boxes with a coin slot and pull out knobs that (hopefully) dispense the item into a tiny slot to grab from. The AARMs, according to the company, will scan photo identification to ensure that customers are at least 21.
But that’s not all. The machines will also use facial recognition tech to make sure the person supplying an ID is the person pictured, though how well this will work given the quality of driver’s license photos remains to be seen. Instead of rounded knobs to pull, customers will, of course, make their ammunition selections on a touch screen. American Rounds says ammo for most brands of pistols and rifles, plus shot, will be available.
The company installed its first machine in a grocery story in Pell City, Alabama, last November. The town is about a half-hour away from Birmingham with a population of 15,000. Since then, they’ve placed another six in stores in Texas, Oklahoma, and Alabama. Grant Magers, CEO, says the company has gotten “hundreds” of requests from store owners in states around the country.
It looks like a grocery store in Colorado will be the next installation.
Though the idea of a vending machine for bullets sounds shocking to many, they are perfectly legal with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.
Unsurprisingly, though, gun control advocates are not happy with the march of technological progress in ammunition sales. Nicole Golden is the executive director of Texas Gun Sense, and she says making bullets available in kiosks is a move in “the wrong direction.” Using a fudged statistic, Golden claimed “guns are the leading cause of death for children and teens” and that access to ammunition should not be expanded in a country that has as many mass shootings as the U.S. does.
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