Dick’s Sporting Goods destroyed $5 million worth of guns after it made the decision to stop selling semi-automatic rifles in its stores, Edward Stack, the retailer’s CEO, revealed.
The sporting goods chain stopped selling assault-style weapons in its Dick’s locations after the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. But the company expanded that policy to its 35 Field & Stream stores in the wake of the 2018 shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida.
In addition to stopping the sale of semi-automatic rifles, Dick’s raised the minimum age for any customer to purchase a firearm from 18 to 21.
“I said, ‘You know what? If we really think these things should be off the street, we need to destroy them,’” Stack said in a CBS interview.
Stack said he and his wife began weighing the moral implications of selling firearms in the wake of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, during which 17 people were killed. The gunman purchased a shotgun at Dick’s, though it wasn’t the gun used in the rampage.
“That’s when I said, ‘We’re done,’” Stack said.
After announcing Dick’s would no longer sell guns to customers under the age of 21, Stack estimated the company lost roughly $250 billion.
The sporting goods store also decided to remove all firearms from more than 100 locations and is still conducting a “strategic review” of whether to stop selling guns at all of its 720 stores nationwide.
“So many people say to me, you know, ‘If we do what you want to do, it’s not going to stop these mass shootings,” Stack said. “And my response is, ‘You’re probably right. It won’t. But if we do these things and it saves one life, don’t you think it’s worth it?’”
Many companies have been reevaluating their firearms policies in the wake of back-to-back shootings at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, and an entertainment district in Dayton, Ohio, this summer that left more than 30 people dead.
Walmart, which stopped selling semi-automatic rifles in 2015 and raised the minimum age to buy a firearm to 21 in 2018, announced in September it would be ending the sale of handgun ammunition. The retailer also asked customers not to openly carry in Walmart stores, and in the wake of the announcement, a cascade of other companies issued similar requests to their customers.
