Dick's Sporting Goods CEO Didn't Just Want Guns Off Shelves, Ordered Them Destroyed
The CEO of Dick’s Sporting Goods followed up his decision to remove so-called “assault weapons” from his company’s stores with a shocking order for the firearms to be turned into useless scrap metal.
CEO Ed Stack revealed what was behind the order in an interview with CBS News that aired Sunday.
Stack first directed his stores to pull AR-15s and similar rifles after the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
Customers could still purchase the rifles at the company’s Field and Stream stores, according to the Washington Examiner.
“All we were going to do was just take it off the shelf and not say anything,” Stack said.
Another school shooting more than 5 years later led the CEO to make even more radical changes.
After the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida in 2018, Stack doubled down on his company’s restrictions.
Not only did Field and Stream stop selling AR-15s, but Stack also raised the minimum age for all gun sales at his stores to 21.
And that wasn’t all.
“I said, ‘You know what? If we really think these things should be off the street,” Stack said of AR-15s and similar rifles, “we need to destroy them.”
Roughly $5 million worth of firearms were destroyed as a result.
At a time when presidential candidates are promising mass confiscation of firearms, this seems particularly short-sighted and reactionary.
Businesses across America seem to be as divided as voters on the issue of modern sporting rifles, with some anti-gun companies even demanding that customers not open carry in their stores.
Not everyone is going down that road, however.
Some sharp capitalists have used leftists’ push to ban and restrict firearms to not only arm law-abiding American citizens, but make some money in the process.
One gun store even sold out of AR-15s after running a “Beto Special” in honor of Democratic candidate Robert “Beto” O’Rourke, the former Texas congressman who wants to compel Americans to sell their AR-15s to the government.
Although Stack could have sent the rifles back to the manufacturer or sold them at a loss to law enforcement, he chose to destroy them.
Dick’s Sporting Goods may eventually get out of firearms sales completely, Stack says.
The CEO said “the whole category is under strategic review.”
If Stack decides to halt his stores’ gun sales completely, there may be millions of dollars more in firearms sent to the smelter.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.
