From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barrow. This is The Daily.

Today, the nation's largest retailer says it will stop selling the kinds of bullets

used by mass shooters and call on Congress to consider a new ban on assault rifles.

Financial columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin, on why corporate America is now in the business

of regulating guns. It's Thursday, September 5th.

Andrew, tell me about this email that you got. So sitting on my desk, it's midday Tuesday,

actually about to get up to go grab lunch. And I looked at my screen and an email popped up and it

said from Doug McMillan. Now, Doug McMillan is the CEO of Walmart, the largest retailer in the

country. And the subject line was Walmart's next steps. And he started the email, dear Andrew,

I wanted to follow back up with you on the subject of firearms and ammunition and my eyes widened.

And what does it actually say? So he lays out a multi-park plan in the wake of this terrible

massacre that had taken place at a Walmart store in El Paso, which 22 people were killed.

Mm-hmm. About how Walmart is going to move forward and what steps they're going to take to try

to end gun violence. And he says, one, we're going to stop selling certain kind of ammunition,

the kind of ammunition that's often used in military style weapons, the AR-15 style weapons that

you hear so much about that are used in these mass shootings. He also says, we're going to stop

selling handgun ammunition completely. In addition, all of that though, and maybe even more importantly,

he says Walmart is going to advocate that lawmakers have a robust debate about reinstating the assault

weapon ban. And in addition to that, says that Walmart is going to advocate for the government to

fund research into gun violence. These are big steps. For Walmart, these are very big steps.

And unbeknownst to me, 20 minutes later, Walmart is putting out a series of statements.

And this email was effectively a heads up that this was about to happen.

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