Dick’s Sporting Goods, one of the nation’s biggest sporting goods retailers, will remove all assault-style guns from its stores, announced its CEO and chairman Edward Stack on Good Morning America on Tuesday. It will also ban the sale of high capacity magazines and will raise the minimum age of gun buyers to 21 in all states. The retailer also “implored” elected officials to support common sense gun reform including a ban of assault-style firearms.
Stack’s decision comes two weeks after a 19-year-old murdered 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. The 63-year-old executive explained his decision in an interview, citing the fact that the shooter had visited one of Dick’s stores back in November and bought a shotgun. It was not the one used in the shooting but it was enough to rattle the CEO.
“We did everything that the law required and still he was able to buy a gun,” said Stack who is a gun owner himself, “When we looked at that, systems that are in place are just not enough to keep us from selling a gun like that.”
The retailer temporarily took assault-style guns out of its stores after a mass shooting in Sandy Hook Elementary School in late 2012. That shooting took lives of 28 people, mostly young children. A year later, however, Dick’s developed a new hunting and outdoor chain called Field & Stream, where those types of guns were made available for purchase again.
“We are taking these guns out of our stores permanently,” Stack said while admitting that his company’s decision will not be welcomed by everyone, especially at the height of a national gun policy debate. “Our view was if these kids can be brave enough to organize like this, we can be brave enough to take these out of here,” he said.
Dick’s is not the first company to remove assault-type weapons from its stores. One of the world’s biggest retailers, Walmart, removed all AR-15 products from its stores in 2015 although certain types of guns and hunting rifles are still available at its stores.
Stack’s father, Dick, founded the retailer in 1948 with a $300 loan from his grandmother. Ed and his siblings bought the company from his father when it only had two stores in upstate New York. When his father retired in 1984, he took over as CEO and chairman. He brought it public in 2002. Dick's now has over $7.9 billion in revenue (2016) from over 675 locations all over the country.
A major gun retailer in the U.S., Dick’s sales and earnings did not meet expectations last August and its stock plunged by 23% in a day. The company cited its struggling hunting business and lower gun sales as reasons for the drop. Dick’s share price decreased more than 35% in the past 12 months and knocked Stack off of Forbes’ billionaires list. Its shares were up just under 1% on Wednesday morning when the news broke. He joined the ranks in 2013 with a $1.1 billion fortune. Forbes now estimates his net worth at $880 million.
Although it is not yet clear how this decision will affect the company’s financials, Stack said: “Based on what’s happened and with these guns, we don’t want to be a part of this story." In the wake of Parkland shooting, roughly two-in-three Americans think gun control laws should be stricter, according to multiple polls. “We don’t want to see the partisan politics. We hope that the Congress will come together,” he addressed politicians.
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