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Americans love guns. Not only do roughly 40 percent of Americans say they live in a household with guns, but the U.S. beats out every other country on Earth when it comes to the ratio of guns to people (the 2nd most gun-dense country is Yemen, and it’s not even close). Indeed, the U.S. is actually the only country in the world that has more firearms than people. Congratulations, everybody. Given all that, it’s really not surprising that, in some states, you can now walk into a grocery store and buy ammunition from a vending machine as if you were buying a candy bar or a Red Bull.
Well, sorta. Not quite. The vending machine company behind this new trend, American Rounds, says it uses artificial intelligence and facial recognition technologies to verify that buyers are of legal age to buy bullets. So it’s a slightly more rigorous process than buying a Twix.
“As a company our team are supporters of law abiding responsible gun ownership. We believe in the second amendment and that by providing a safe and secure method to sell ammunition is needed in the market,” said American Rounds CEO Grant Magers in an email, when reached for comment by Gizmodo.
Magers, who calls his machines Automated Ammo Retail Machine, or AARMs, said that his company is currently active in eight locations, including in multiple stores in Alabama, Oklahoma, Texas, and Colorado. However, he added that the company was currently seeing immense growth, and had “over 200 store requests for AARM units covering approximately 9 states currently,” a number he said is “growing daily.”
There are shockingly few regulations around ammunition purchases in the U.S., but some of the few that exist are age-based. Federal law says you have to be at least 18 years old to buy ammunition for long guns, like rifles and shotguns, and if you want to buy bullets for handguns, you have to be at least 21. As such, American Rounds has created an identity verification mechanism for its bullet vending machines that can supposedly verify how old the person buying the ammunition is.
“Our smart retail automated ammo dispensers have built-in AI technology, card scanning capability and facial recognition software,” the company’s website states. “Each piece of software works together to verify the person using the machine matches the identification scanned.”
Magers told Gizmodo that his company’s model was actually safer than the existing ammunition sales model. “Currently ammunition is sold off the shelf or online. These environments lead to inadvertent sales to underaged purchasers and or (in the case of retail stores) a high theft rate. What we loved about this concept is the AARM units use state of the art ID scanners combined with facial recognition before a transaction can be made,” Magers said in an email.
Magers said that this model “ensures that the individual is of legal age and that they are who they represent themselves to be. The machines themselves weigh up to 2000lbs and are well secured from theft. We only place them inside stores and not outside (i.e., Redbox).” Magers added that the company has plans to “expand our product offering at the machines” but couldn’t divulge the plans as they are still developing.
On July 5, a local news outlet in Alabama reported that a store in Tuscaloosa had removed one of the machines after “the legality of the machine was questioned” at a city council meeting. The city’s legal department admitted the machines were legal if they met proper zoning requirements. The store has said that it “removed the machine on July 3rd because of a lack of sales,” the outlet reported.
