DICK’s in Danbury + All of CT to Stop Selling Assault-Style Weapons
Kudos to Ed Stack, the CEO of a major sports retailer, for taking a bold move.
Dick's Sporting Goods has locations all around the country, with 12 of them in the state of Connecticut, one of which is in Danbury. Dick's CEO, Ed Stack just made a major announcement.
In a story this morning on abcnews.com, one of the country's biggest sports retailers will no longer sell assault-style rifles. Dick's Sporting Goods said today it's ending sales of the firearms, effective immediately. Dick's also says it will no longer sell high-capacity magazines and it won't sell any type of gun to anyone younger than 21.
Dick's CEO, Edward Stack, says the new policy is a direct response to the mass shooting recently in Florida. Part of the impetuous of the change appears to be the news that the alleged gunman in the school shooting, Nikolas Cruz, purchased a gun from Dick's in 2017. It was not the weapon, nor the type of weapon that Cruz used at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
Edward Stack had this to say to abcnews.go.com
To think about the loss and the grief that those kids and those parents had, we said, ‘We need to do something,' and we’re taking these guns out of all of our stores permanently. We did everything by the book, we did everything that the law required and still he was able to buy a gun. When we looked at that, we said, ‘The systems that are in place across the board just aren’t effective enough to keep us from selling someone a gun like that'
Dick's did temporarily issue the suspension of assault-style rifles from its stores after the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown. Stack had this to say about today's move.
We’re staunch supporters of the 2nd Amendment. I’m a gun owner myself. 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
Stack's father Dick started the company 70 years ago. I applaud the companies newest move.
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