With sales falling after the implementation of corporate gun control Dick’s Sporting Goods may have to close 35 stores across 18 states.
The option of the closing the stores was revealed during a retail conference question and answer session with Goldman Sachs.
Dick’s Chief Financial Officer Lee Belitsky made clear no more of the company’s Field & Stream stores would be built and CEO Edward Stack went even further, floating the option of the closing the Field & Stream stores that exist already.
Stack said:
My sense is that we can either take a look at closing that store, that concept or reconceptualizing it into a more of an outdoor type concept and we’re taking a look at all of these things and by the end of – the peak of the hunting season is coming up in – and basically, the end of the third and the beginning of the fourth quarter and as we move into the end of the fourth quarter, we’ll make a decision as to what we’re going to do.
Stack explained the corporate gun control Dick’s adopted in February, which precipitated the slumping sales:
What we said is, we would not sell any of the assault-style rifles, we wouldn’t sell high-capacity magazines. We’d never sold bumps stocks which turn a semiautomatic weapon into basically an automatic weapon, and we wouldn’t sell firearms to anyone under 21 years of age.
Additionally, Dick’s followed its decision to quit selling commonly owned semiautomatic rifles by destroying the unsold rifles in stock, rather than sending them back to the manufacturer. They did the same thing with “high capacity” magazines in their inventory. And on August 31, Breitbart News reported that Dick’s would begin removing “hunt products” from certain stores.
With sales falling, Dick’s now faces the option of closing its Field & Stream stores altogether. The Washington Free Beacon reports that Dick’s has 35 such stores across 18 states.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets with AWR Hawkins, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.
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