Ammo vending machines come to US grocery stores

The Dallas-based company opened its first self-serve ammunition machine at a Fresh Value grocery store in Pell City, Alabama in 2023. It offers a selection of rifle, shotgun, and handgun ammunition from different brands. American Rounds says it is not just more convenient to buy your bullets at the grocery store, but safer than getting it at a large depot or even online. Critics suggest that the very idea of impulse buying ammunition promotes suicide and shootings.

But the company does promote suicide prevention and considers that part of its mandate. “If you’re in the ammunition space … you have a social responsibility to make things as safe as possible while maintaining the integrity of the Second Amendment,” American Rounds CEO Grant Magers told The Washington Post. “We wanted to accomplish both.”

The ammo machines are active in around a dozen grocery stores in Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama and Colorado. The company has found a home in Fresh Value, Lowe’s Market and Super C Mart. When Fresh Value became the first location to offer American Rounds, its chief operating officer said the opportunity had the store “excited” to be a part of “what we think is the first ammo kiosk.”

The company is continuing to expand its reach and has plans to move into over 200 locations but is finding it difficult to keep up with the pace. It plans to have its products available in 100 more stores by the end of 2025. “We knew we had something special, but we didn’t know that it was going to explode like that,” Magers said. The company has received requests for the kiosks in nearly every state.

Purchasers can see the products via a touch screen. The actual ammunition is hidden from view. “These are double-walled steel, 2,000-pound machines that are always indoors under security cameras,” Magers told The Post. “(Ammo is) not sitting on a shelf, you know, like your bread aisle in the grocery store.”

To buy bullets from an American Rounds machine, customers need to be 21 years of age or older, even if state law dictates people as young as 18 can legally buy ammunition. Buyers have to prove their identity with the system used by the Transportation Security Administration at US airports. In this, the company is going beyond federal laws that don’t require ID verification to complete an ammunition sale. “We’re the only company in America that can say 100 percent, every (ammo) purchase, that there’s an ID verified,” Magers said.

In terms of ensuring that they are not facilitating suicides, American Rounds says it works with a pro-Second Amendment group called Walk the Talk America that actively seeks to prevent suicide. Notifications of available help for mental health issues are pictured on the screens along with the national suicide prevention hotline number, 988.