The retailer has been vocally anti-gun, and now it’s taking an even firmer stand.
Dick’s Sporting Goods has announced it will scale back its gun business.
In an earnings call on March 13, CEO Edward Stack told investors that the sporting goods retailer would stop selling firearms at 125 locations — roughly 17 percent of its stores in the US. Dick’s will replace these firearm sections with other categories, like shoes and clothes, and will also test experiential retail concepts like in-store batting cages.
This significant step away from the gun business comes one year after Dick’s took swift action in response to the February 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 students and staff members dead. In a move that sparked both celebration from gun control activists to celebrate and protests from Second Amendment advocates, the company stopped selling guns to customers younger than 21, and pulled assault rifles and high-capacity magazines from all its Dick’s Sporting Goods Stores as well as from its sub-brand Field & Stream.
Stack made it clear that he felt his company needed to take a strong stance in America’s heated gun control debate.
“Thoughts and prayers are not enough,” he wrote in a widely shared statement after the Parkland shooting. “We have to help solve the problem that’s in front of us. Gun violence is an epidemic that’s taking the lives of too many people, including the brightest hope for the future of America — our kids.”
But thoughts and prayers are not enough.
