Dick’s Sporting Goods Executive Chairman Ed Stack defended the company’s decision to tighten its gun policies in 2018 even after facing strong backlash.
Stack spoke candidly at NRF 2024: Retail’s Big Show in New York City on Monday, saying he firmly believed it is important for the sporting goods retailer, in certain issues, “to really step up and make a statement.”
During a discussion with NRF CEO Matt Shay, Stack said the country is “holding businesses accountable for how they view different issues in the world, how they run their businesses, how they treat their employees, how they treat the communities that they serve.”
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Stack continued by saying that if companies have a sense of what’s going on in the world and have the power to make a difference, then they “should stand up and say something.”
Dick’s has done this on several occasions, according to Stack. But he pointed, in particular, to the policy changes the company implemented following the Parkland, Florida, shooting in February 2018 when Nikolas Cruz opened fire on students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, killing 17.
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After the Parkland shooting, Stack, then CEO, learned that Cruz had been able to buy a shotgun at one of the company’s stores in the months before the shooting.
Although it wasn’t the gun Cruz used to kill students and staff at the school, Stack said he should “never have been able to buy a gun.”
“We knew the system was broken. So we needed to really stand up and try to make some changes,” he said.
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Those changes included restricting firearm and ammunition sales to anyone under 21 years old and prohibiting the sale of AR-15-style rifles.
“We knew that there was going to be some very real blowback from that and there was,” Stack said. “But listen to those kids who survived Parkland and listen to those parents that lost a child… we needed to stand up and say something.”
Stack said in an October 2019 interview that the company lost $250 million from the restrictions it imposed on firearm sales.