One analyst thinks Dick’s Sporting Goods CEO Ed Stack has shown other big retailers exactly what will happen to them if they’re perceived as anti-gun.
Analysts think Dick’s has sent the message that it’s moving away from firearms sales, and those sales are moving elsewhere.
“All Dick’s has done to themselves is alienate their customer base,” said David Almasi, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy Research, whose Free Enterprise Project invests in publicly traded companies and uses its status as a shareholder to advocate for conservative policies.
At the annual meeting of Dick’s shareholders last year, Almasi and Justin Danhof, the head of the Free Enterprise Project, pressed Stack on the company’s decision to raise the minimum age for firearms purchases in the aftermath of the Florida high school shooting, which left 17 dead. He plans to return this year.
In the meantime, Almasi doesn’t expect stores like Bass Pro, Gander Outdoor or Walmart, which has more than 5,000 U.S. stores, to stop selling guns or ammunition. Cabela’s megastore in Gainesville, Va., has the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the right to bear arms etched in its walls, he noted.
“If anything, these other companies now have a clear warning of what will happen to them” if they take actions perceived as unfriendly by gun rights advocates, Almasi told the Washington Examiner.
– James Langford in Where can you buy guns if Dick’s stops selling them? Almost anywhere