It apparently wasn’t enough for Dick’s Sporting Goods to announce, in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting, that they’d stop selling AR-15 rifles and won’t sell long guns to anyone under 21. Then they let it be known that, rather than disposing of their now non-salable ARs and other forbidden inventory in ways that would have salvaged some value, they instead decided that they would destroy it all in order to reduce the chances that any of the items might someday be used in a mass shooting. Or something.
Now, The Federalist reports that Dick’s is engaged in actively lobbying Congress for stiffer gun control legislation . . .
Dick’s Sporting Goods, which announced in February it would no longer sell rifles to anyone under the age of 21, hired three Beltway lobbyists to lobby Congress for gun control, according to federal records reviewed by The Federalist.
The lobbying records show Dick’s hired two Democrats and one Republican from Glover Park Group, a DC-based government affairs firm, for “[l]obbying related to gun control.” No other policy issues were listed in the disclosure form filed by the firm. The disclosure forms show Dick’s pro-gun control lobbying effort began official on April 27, 2018. The official registration form noting Dick’s retention of Glover to push for gun control was filed on Monday morning.
Alienating a significant percentage of the retailer’s customers doesn’t seem to be a concern for CEO Edward Stack. He’s bound and determined to move the gun control ball forward.
As Stack wrote in the Washington Post in March . . .
In the weeks since we at Dick’s Sporting Goods announced plans to stop selling assault-style rifles, plans to only sell firearms to those over 21 and other new policies, we have been striving to keep this conversation going. We have met with a number of lawmakers and have talked with many of our peers in the retail industry. We have spoken with strong-willed advocacy groups and visited with families in Parkland. …
This issue transcends our company’s bottom line. We suspected that speaking out would have a negative impact on our business. But this was about our values and standing up for what we think is right.
With the latest filing revealing the anti-gun lobbying effort, it appears that Stack’s commitment to seeing more gun control restrictions on the books wasn’t just virtue-signaling lip service.
As Stack predicted, his Fudd-like devotion to limiting the kinds of firearm Americans can purchase isn’t doing much for his company’s stock price. And while Stack owns a majority of Dick’s shares, as a publicly traded company, he has a fiduciary duty to maximize Dick’s earnings and ROI. It’s hard to imagine that his shareholders will be terribly happy to hear about the company’s new lobbying effort that won’t result in a penny of extra profit.