Dick's Sporting Goods Pulls Firearms from Over Half of Stores

The Wall Street Journal has the story here.

The company’s plans to eliminate the hunting department at about 440 more Dick’s Sporting Goods locations follows the earlier removal of the department at 135 stores. The company had 850 stores at the end of the last fiscal year, most of which were Dick’s Sporting Goods locations.

In 2018, following the mass shooting at a Parkland, Fla., high school, Dick’s said it would sell guns only to people at least 21 years old, and would stop selling assault-style rifles at its 35 Field & Stream stores. The company stopped selling assault-style rifles at its flagship Dick’s stores following the 2012 deadly shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.

Firearms and ammunition are a shrinking part of the company’s business but Dick’s CEO Edward Stack has taken a public stance on the issue and lobbied for more stringent restrictions on firearms sales.

That shrinking part is largely do to a number of gun owners ending their patronage after Stack joined forces with the gun ban lobby and actively pushed for increased gun control.  Shortly there after the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the trade association for the firearms industry, expelled the retailer from the association's membership. 

The retailer also reported its latest financial results yesterday and said it expects same-store sales for this fiscal year to be between about flat to up 2%. Last year Dick's saw the company’s same-store sales increase by 3.7%.   Stack has admitted that the company took a sales hit after he became a proponent for gun control.