This time of year, shoppers who set foot inside Lowe’s Market in downtown Canyon Lake, are usually looking for two things: swimming gear and beer. The cramped and busy grocery store, which is located about an hour north of San Antonio and whose wide selection of disparate items gives it the feel of a mini-Walmart, is often the last stop for supplies before locals and tourists float down the nearby Guadalupe River, a Texas summer tradition.
But for the last two weeks, something else has lured an endless stream of outdoor enthusiasts, ranchers, gun lovers, and tourists into the store, often with looks of excitement and curiosity splashed across their faces. It’s not the fresh produce, the sunscreen, or even the generous selection of wine and beer. They want to glimpse an audacious intersection of consumer technology and weaponry—an interactive, two-thousand-pound ammunition dispenser that looks like it dropped out of a Second Amendment-themed future and into the most unlikely of commercial locations. Sandwiched between a small ATM and a row of ice machines near the store’s front entrance, the double-walled, triple-locked steel vault wrapped in an American flag decal beckons customers to swipe their credit card with a simple tagline: “Need to reload?” Online, the company’s motto advertises “Ammo Sales Like You’ve Never Seen Before.”
For some locals, the patriotic kiosk, which has already been restocked once after selling out, is a source of convenience, a clever idea that saves a trip to the nearest sporting goods store, which is 32 miles away in San Marcos. For others, it’s a transgressive delight, an almost comical reminder of the rights that many Texans hold dear. And for a few others, the machine is a disturbing eyesore, particularly because the first ammo vending machine in Texas is located next to a local middle school at a time when the mass shootings of children in Uvalde and Santa Fe High remain a fresh memory in many minds. During the school year, that Lowe’s Market location is frequented by teenage customers, especially after classes let out. Last week, a USA Today columnist wrote that the machines, juxtaposed with bananas and diapers, felt like “something out of a dystopian novel.” So far, at least, the curiosity—and controversy—have been great for business. “That machine has been the talk of the town,” the store’s general manager, who asked not to be named, told me as customers stopped to gawk at the kiosk on a recent Saturday.
Asked about the concern that some Canyon Lake residents have expressed about the machine’s proximity to a middle school, the manager didn’t mince words: “Do you really think a 13-year-old could buy ammo from that thing considering how secure it is?” he asked. “There’s been some concern in the community, but I don’t see it happening.” But not everyone in town shares the manager’s confidence. “If young people are coming in here with a fake ID or someone is a criminal, how are you going to stop them?” asked a gun owner and Canyon Lake resident who identified himself as Terry. “Personally, I think it goes too far.”
How secure are the machines? Grant Magers, the chief executive of American Rounds, the Richardson-based company that manufactures the kiosks—seven of which have been deployed across Alabama, Oklahoma, and now Texas—said the machines include facial-recognition technology (the same kind used by the Transportation Security Administration at airports) that verifies a customer’s age and identification, based on a driver’s license. After a transaction, he said, that information is neither stored nor sold. Though the state of Texas doesn’t impose a minimum age or require a license for the purchase or possession of ammunition—and federal law requires that purchasers be at least 18—the machines don’t sell to anyone under the age of 21. The dispenser doesn’t include a background check of criminal records, Magers said, but it’s more restrictive than other methods for buying bullets. If a customer’s facial hair doesn’t match that of the image on their driver’s license, he pointed out, the vending machine denies the sale. Though traditional ammunition sales are supposed to include human oversight, he said, that’s rarely the case. “Right now, a 15-year-old with his father’s credit card can go online, buy hundreds of rounds, and there’s zero ID check,” Magers said, adding that, over the three decades that he’s been purchasing ammunition in person, he’s never been asked to present an ID. “At many large retailers, ammunition is just out in the open sitting there like boxes of cereal on the shelf at the grocery store and it’s a high-theft item.”
While Magers believes his invention will make it harder for criminals to buy ammunition, he says the machine also makes good business sense. Magers, who earned an MBA from SMU and refers to himself as a serial entrepreneur, said that during the pandemic, he and his business partner began to notice how quickly automated retail was growing in popularity. The trend wasn’t only a convenient way to enforce social distancing, he said, but also a way for some retailers to address labor shortages, cut costs, and make certain items theft-proof. After researching what sort of items might be in demand from an automated kiosk, the pair discovered that customers who frequent rural grocery stores, such as Lowe’s Market in Canyon Lake, often travel long distances to buy ammunition from big-box retailers. “If you’re a hunter and you’re loading up your food and gear and you realize you need a little bit of extra ammunition, you don’t want to drive 45 minutes into town to get it,” he said. “So it makes sense for the grocery stores from a market standpoint because this is something people in these areas were asking for.”
In November, American Rounds installed its first automated ammunition machine at a Fresh Value grocery store in Pell City, Alabama. Since then, the company has placed kiosks inside another Alabama location, as well as in grocery stores in Oklahoma and now Texas. Magers said his team plans to add a second kiosk to another Lowe’s location in Canyon Lake before rolling them out across the state. The machines are always placed inside stores and only available during hours of operation.
David Pucino, the legal director and deputy chief counsel of Giffords Law Center, a group that advocates for stronger gun safety laws, said those minor restrictions mean little. Security aside, he said, the machines are part of a larger effort being advanced by the gun industry to normalize bringing weapons into public spaces, undermining everyone’s safety “in the name of increased sales.” Instead of working to address lax laws that allow minors to buy ammunition, Pucino said, American Rounds is taking advantage of lax laws to make that ammunition easily accessible.
In 2023, Texas had the highest number of school shooting casualties in the United States, with 21 victims, followed by Maryland (20) and California (18), according to the K–12 School Shooting Database, an open source research project that documents school shooting incidents. Asked why a vending machine poses a larger threat than someone being able to order ammunition online, Pucino said it comes down to being able to buy it “on demand” and without human oversight. “If a person has a sudden, drunken impulse to commit a horrific act, now they just have to go to the grocery store,” he said.
Nick Suplina, senior vice president for law and policy at Everytown, a gun violence prevention group that advocates for stricter gun regulations, said innovations that make ammunition sales more secure via age verification, facial recognition, and the tracking of serial sales are “promising safety measures.” But, he said, those measures should be implemented in gun stores, not in a place where you “buy your kids milk, let alone within a stone’s throw of a school.”
Asked to respond to critics who have criticized the location of his lone Texas ammo vending machine, Magers suggested those concerns were misguided because minors can’t use the kiosk. Arguing that the vending machine acts as a deterrence for criminality, he asked what was more likely if someone wanted to commit mass murder with a weapon: going online to purchase five hundred rounds or going to a grocery store with security cameras to use a machine that requires a credit card and uses facial-recognition technology? “We support legal, law abiding, responsible gun ownership and do not support any kind of irresponsible use of firearms,” he said.
Whether you find the machines distasteful or a welcome addition to the grocery-shopping experience, there can be little doubt that they are simple to use. After touching the screen and agreeing to the machine’s terms and conditions, customers can choose between various handgun, rifle, and shotgun rounds. Unlike a conventional vending machine that allows the user to see the product through a glass panel, American Rounds contraptions rely on large touch screens that display graphics.
By the time I’d inserted my driver’s license into the kiosk and begun the facial scan, which requires customers to turn their heads from side to side, a small crowd of shoppers had formed behind me. Eager to assist a stranger in the ammo-buying journey, my fellow shoppers gave me tips when I failed my initial scan by standing too close to the machine. At one point the small assembly grew so large that the store manager asked me to stop clogging the building’s entrance. “I heard about this on Facebook and I just wanted to see how it works,” a middle-aged man in a sleeveless T-shirt told me as he watched from over my shoulder. Another man, who had made a thirty-minute detour that morning to see the kiosk after dropping off his wife in San Marcos, said the ammunition prices seemed a bit high, but that it made sense because “you’re paying for convenience.” About thirty seconds after I’d inserted my credit card, a panel near the bottom of the kiosk opened and I retrieved my box of 223-caliber rifle cartridges, typically used for hunting and self-defense. The cost: $18.99.
On my way out, I asked a store employee what she thought about the public’s fascination with the vending machine. She seemed slightly amused by “the bullet machine,” as she referred to it, but a little numb to the excitement after several weeks of nonstop chatter. “One thing is for sure,” she said, breaking into a playful smile, “those liberals in Austin would never allow that machine within their city limits.”
