Dick's Sporting Goods Gets Hit with Brutal Consequences for Pushing Gun Control

By Joe Saunders May 5, 2018 at 9:43am

Dick’s Sporting Goods better hope the gun control crowd buys a lot of sneakers.

The Pennsylvania-based retailer has been lapping up a lot of free publicity from the mainstream media thanks to its over-the-top response to February’s mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

But its turncoat activism against the Second Amendment rights of American citizens is starting to hit hard in the business world.

One day after one of the largest gun manufacturers in America announced it was cutting all ties to Dick’s because of Dick’s newly public stance against gun rights, the board of governors of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, country’s umbrella association of firearms-related businesses, unceremoniously voted to kick out Dick’s.

The vote was unanimous.

The statement is unmistakeable.

Dick’s has been in the news a good bit lately, mainly in a flattering light as the anti-gun mainstream media praised the company’s decision to no longer sell so-called assault weapons or “high capacity magazines,” and restrict the sale of any firearms to buyers 21 or older.

A Washington Post headline, “Dick’s Sporting Goods took a stand on gun sales — and made a big statement,” is a good example of how the mainstream media lionized the company.

Well, the gun rights side can make a pretty big statement when it wants to, too. And the National Sports Shooting Foundation’s statement on Friday kicking Dick’s out was pretty emphatic.

Will Dick's Sporting Goods regret taking the stance it has?

Dick’s CEO Edward Stack and his team have the right to run their company any way they want, but when the company goes so far as hiring a lobbying firm in D.C. with ties to gun grabbing organizations, it’s not welcome in the shooting community anymore.

As the Federalist reported Wednesday, Dick’s had hired the Glover Park Group, a Beltway-insider operation, for “lobbying related to gun control.”

In its announcement that Dick’s had been expelled, the NSSF cited the lobbyist hire as apparently the straw that broke the camel’s back:

“The National Shooting Sports Foundation® (NSSF®), the trade association for the firearms, ammunition, hunting and shooting sports industries, Board of Governors today unanimously voted to expel Dick’s Sporting Goods from membership for conduct detrimental to the best interests of the Foundation.

“Dick’s Sporting Goods recently hired a Washington D.C.-based government affairs firm, for ‘[l]obbying related to gun control.’ Dick’s Sporting Goods CEO Edward W. Stack announced earlier this year the retail chain would end sales of modern sporting rifles, voluntarily raise the age to 21 to purchase firearms in their stores and called for more restrictive legislation. Dick’s later announced they would destroy the remaining modern sporting rifle inventory. NSSF responded that business decisions should be individually made, but was nonetheless disappointed and the decision does not reflect the reality of the vast majority of law-abiding gun owners.”

The first part of that last sentence is the key. The NSSF recognizes that “business decisions should be individually made” — that’s how America operates.

But Dick’s isn’t just changing its inventory system by not stocking what the mainstream media calls “assault weapons.” And it isn’t just alienating potential customers by instituting age requirements for firearms purchases where they’re not required by law (and could well be unconstitutional where they are required.)

With the hiring of the Glover Park Group, Dick’s has actively joined the gun control debate on the side that’s aiming to restrict the constitutional rights of American citizens.

Maybe it’s a decision of conscience, as the Washington Post would have it.

Maybe it’s a business decision aimed at pandering to the social justice warrior crowd while deliberately snubbing American gun owners, and the market for sporting goods they represent.

Either way, Dick’s bosses have made their choice. They just better hope that gun-control crowd buys a lot of sneakers.

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Tags:

Culture, Gun control, Mass shooting, Second Amendment

Joe Saunders

Story Editor

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Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro desk editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He's been with Liftable Media since 2015.

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Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He's been with Liftable Media since 2015. Largely a product of Catholic schools, who discovered Ayn Rand in college, Joe is a lifelong newspaperman who learned enough about the trade to be skeptical of every word ever written. He was also lucky enough to have a job that didn't need a printing press to do it.

Birthplace

Philadelphia

Nationality

American