Store stops selling assault-style rifles
U.S. retail giant also halts sale of guns to anyone under 21 as CEO urges stronger laws
NEW YORK— Dick’s Sporting Goods will immediately stop selling assaultstyle rifles and ban the sale of all guns to anyone under 21, the company said Wednesday, as its CEO made an emphatic call for significant changes to U.S. gun policy after the massacre at a Florida high school.
The strongly worded announcement from the sporting goods chain that is also a major U.S. gun retailer came as students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., return to class for the first time since a teenager killed 17 students and educators with an AR-15 two weeks ago. “When we saw what the kids were going through and the grief of the parents and the kids who were killed in Parkland, we felt we needed to do something,” chairperson and CEO Ed Stack said on Good Morning America.
The decision to overhaul its own rules on gun sales, and the emphatic words from Stack, put the company out front in a falling-out between corporate America and groups such as the National Rifle Association (NRA). Several major U.S. corporations including MetLife, Hertz and Delta Air Lines cut ties with the NRA in the days following the Parkland shooting, but none were retailers that sold guns. The announcement drew hundreds of thousands of responses on the company’s Facebook page, many of them emphatic thanks or criticism of the company for taking such a stand. Gun-control advocacy groups said voters and corporations are taking the lead on U.S. gun policy, and lawmakers need to catch up.
Dick’s Sporting Goods had cut off sales of assault-style weapons at Dick’s stores after the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. But sales had resumed at its smaller chain of Field & Stream stores. On Wednesday, Stack said that would end and he called on lawmakers to act now.
“We support and respect the Second Amendment, and we recognize and appreciate that the vast majority of gun owners in this country are responsible, law-abiding citizens,” Stack wrote in a letter Wednesday. “But we have to help solve the prob- lem 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.”
Stack also revealed that Nikolas Cruz, who is charged with killing 17 people at a Florida school, using an AR-15 assault-style rifle, had purchased a shotgun at a Dick’s store within the past four months.
“It was not the gun, nor type of gun, he used in the shooting,” Stack wrote. “But it could have been. Clearly this indicates on so many levels that the systems in place are not effective to protect our kids and our citizens.”
The National Rifle Association has pushed back aggressively against calls for raising age limits for guns, or limits on sales of assault-style weapons. Calls to the NRA were not immediately returned Wednesday.
Stack called on elected officials to ban assault-style firearms, bump stocks and high-capacity magazines and raise the minimum age to buy firearms to 21. He said universal background checks should be required, and there should be a complete universal database of those banned from buying firearms. He also called for the closure of the private sale and gun show loophole that waives the necessity of background checks.