After eliminating guns from 10 of their stores last year, Dick’s Sporting Goods is pulling all firearms and hunting gear from 125 of their 850 Dick’s and 35 Field & Stream stores.
According to Fox Business:
The in-store sections will be replaced with “merchandise categories that can drive growth,” (CEO Ed Stack) said.
Following a shooting in Florida in February 2018 that left 17 students and staff dead, Dick’s hiked the minimum age to purchase a gun to 21 and prohibited the sale of AR-15 style rifles.
While Stack previously predicted it would bring in new customers, the decision has led to a decline in earnings in the firm’s hunting business.
In the three months through Feb. 2, declines in the sector drove a 3.7 percent drop in same-store sales. Overall, sales dropped 6.5 percent to $2.5 billion, the company said on Tuesday. Profits fell to $694 million, or adjusted to $1.22 per share – higher than analysts expected.
Gun owners have rejected the retailer after they pulled “assault rifles” from Dick’s and Field & Stream stores following the Parkland shooting, then rubbed salt in the wound by funding gun control lobbying efforts in Washington.