Dick’s keeps promise, destroys $5M in guns

Edward W. Stack, chief executive of Dick’s Sporting Goods, said in an interview this week that his company had destroyed over $5 million in military-style, semi-automatic rifles and was reviewing whether it would continue to sell guns in its more than 720 stores.

Stack was speaking with CBS Sunday Morning while promoting his new book, It’s How We Play the Game.

“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 told CBS. “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?’”

Stack said that he and his wife, Donna, have been weighing the moral consequences of selling firearms patterned on the AR-15 and other militarystyle weapons since the February 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. The couple had learned that the gunman had bought a gun in a Dick’s store. Although that firearm was not used in the Parkland shooting, which left 17 dead, Stack and his wife met with survivors in Florida.

In April 2018, Dick’s Sporting Goods, one of the largest firearms sellers in the United States, said it planned to destroy the military-style rifles it had agreed to take off its shelves weeks after the shooting.

Previously, the Pennsylvania retailer had also agreed to ban the sale of military-style rifles at its 35 Field & Stream stores and to stop selling firearms and ammunition to anyone younger than 21.

Since the massacre in Parkland, corporations have responded to the public’s growing demand for gun control measures. Among them are Walmart, the nation’s largest gun seller; L.L. Bean; and Kroger, which said in 2018 it would restrict gun sales at its Fred Meyer stores.