A US church has lost its fight to stop giant retailer Wal-Mart selling high-performance sporting rifles.

Trinty Wall Street Church in New York, which owns 3,500 shares in Wal-Mart, wanted the company to include a proposal seeking a board review of its sale of semiautomatic rifles with high-capacity magazines and other products. Wal-Mart had declined to do so but lost a previous federal court ruling which ordered it to include the measure.
However, an appeals court has ruled that Wal-Mart's shareholders did not have the right to challenge its sales policies.

Trinity's vicar, Rev Phillip Jackson, told the Washington Times that while the church was still considering its legal options, it was pleased that the case drew attention to "an important issue of corporate governance and social responsibility".

He said it would "continue to challenge the management and boards of the companies in which we invest to make social responsibility a real and integral part of their corporate mission".

The ruling was welcomed by opponents of gun control, with Larry Keane, senior vice president and general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, telling the Times: "We believe that was the correct decision by the court. It's untenable for shareholders with a political agenda to be making business decisions for a company. If they don't agree with the business decisions of the company, they can sell their shares."

However, it also has wider implications concerning the influence shareholders should have on their companies' day-to-day operating decisions. While Trinity could not force Wal-Mart's management not to sell the rifles, it sought a formal review of the policy which would have aired the arguments in public for other shareholders; the court's ruling means that Wal-Mart is not required to do this.