Dick’s announces end to assault-style rifle sales, other gun policies

Dick’s Sporting Goods is making waves today in the wake of the Parkland, Fla., shooting.

The Coraopolis, Pa.,-based company, which has a store in Onalaska, announced these changes Wednesday.

• We will no longer sell assault-style rifles, also referred to as modern sporting rifles. We had already removed them from all DICK’S stores after the Sandy Hook massacre, but we will now remove them from sale at all 35 Field & Stream stores.
• We will no longer sell firearms to anyone under 21 years of age.
• We will no longer sell high capacity magazines.
• We never have and never will sell bump stocks that allow semi-automatic weapons to fire more rapidly.

“When we saw what happened in Parkland, we were so disturbed and upset,” CEO Edward Stack told the New York Times. “We love these kids and their rallying cry, ‘enough is enough.’ It got to us.”

According to its statement, Dick’s sold a shotgun to the Parkland shooter in Nov. 2017.

“It was not the gun, nor type of gun, he used in the shooting,” the statement said. “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.”

Dick’s also called the government to make changes writing in the statement, “We implore our elected officials to enact common sense gun reform and pass the following regulations:

• Ban assault-style firearms
• Raise the minimum age to purchase firearms to 21
• Ban high-capacity magazines and bump stocks
• Require universal background checks that include relevant mental health information and previous interactions with the law
• Ensure a complete universal database of those banned from buying firearms
• Close the private sale and gun show loophole that waives the necessity of background checks”

In 2012, following the Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown, Conn., Dick’s suspended the sale of certain kinds of semi-automatic rifles. The suspension, however, wasn’t permanent and those guns were later sold at the company’s Field & Stream stores.

So, Tuesday’s changes were more thorough.

“We’re staunch supporters of the Second Amendment. I’m a gun owner myself,” Stack said in an interview on Good Morning America on Wednesday. “We’ve just decided that based on what’s happened with these guns, we don’t want to be a part of this story and we’ve eliminated these guns permanently.”