Scott Weber, 63, has seen department stores enter and exit the firearms market over the years, and remembers poring over pages of gun ads in the Sears catalog while growing up on a farm.

Big retail chains such as Sears “have them and then they don’t,” said Weber, who owns Gunrunner Firearms & Auction. That’s why he thinks the decision by Dick’s Sporting Goods to pull guns out of nearly one-fifth of its 700-plus stores will probably make no more difference than similar shifts in the past.