A couple weeks after the terrible gun massacre in Parkland, Florida, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Dick’s Sporting Goods store announced that it would be both raising the age of who could purchase firearms at their stores from 18 to 21 years old, and that they would stop selling assault-style weapons. Dick’s Sporting Goods followed that by explaining that they would be destroying the assault weapons they had taken from their shelves. This has led to a lot of angry NRA-type pieces by people like Tom Knighton and Micah Rate over at the Bearing Arms website, which is either about guns or about using arm hair dyes.
What a waste, and what a strange business model.
The store is already taking a hit due to its involvement in the gun control debate, as Tom wrote about here. Those troubles may continue with this news. According to the report, the Parkland shooter didn’t even purchase the firearm used in the massacre from one of the company’s stores. However, Dick’s Sporting Goods’ Chairman and CEO did say that the shooter had bought a shotgun from the store the year before.
The article he’s referring to is titled “Dick’s Virtue Signaling Costs Them...Literally.” It’s about this Fortune magazine article that actually talks about how Dick’s Sporting Goods is facing lagging sales, and has been for a while, surrounding their actual sporting goods. It uses the decision to stop selling assault-style weapons as a positive jumping-off point for a problem Dick’s has been facing for some time—unrelated to gun sales.
The future had appeared bright after Sports Authority collapsed in 2016, leaving Dick’s as the last national chain of its kind. But price cutting by competitors and tepid demand for items like basketball shoes have hammered the stock and put pressure on profit margins.
The company is also facing a threat from Nike, the largest sports brand in the world, which has been pushing more of its customers to its own stores and websites. And Amazon.com Inc. is promoting its own private-label athletic gear.
If you didn’t know, Amazon and Nike aren’t in the gun-sales business. Bearing Arms conveniently forgets to mention that ending sales of assault weapons in their stores may be the most positive business move Dick’s has made in a while, as public opinion about the store has risen since they announced the ban.
The only real blowback from this announcement has been a lawsuit by a 20-year-old who believes he should be allowed to buy a gun from Dick’s. Instead, Bearing Arms goes on to say that even though the sales drop from assault guns is minuscule compared to the real issues facing the company … guns are the reason Dick’s Sporting Goods has had dwindling sales numbers. Forget about how retail numbers have continued to drop across the country for the last three months as the ramifications of having the worst administration and Congress in the history of the country begins to settle in. Nope, it’s the 30-year-overdue attack on weak gun laws.
You will also notice the hackneyed argument that the gun Nikolas Cruz bought at a Dick’s Sporting Goods store a year before the gun-massacre he initiated wasn’t the actual gun he used. But as Dick’s CEO Edward Stack had explained:
Following all of the rules and laws, we sold a shotgun to the Parkland shooter in November of 2017. It was not the gun, nor type of gun, he used in the shooting. But it could have been.
Clearly this indicates on so many levels that the systems in place are not effective to protect our kids and our citizens.
Bearing Arms, after scrubbing off forearm bleach, seizes on this to make the final and hollow NRA point: there are laws, and they just have to be followed better.
Contrary to what Stack believes, the systems that are in place are sufficient if all the parts of the system do the job each is intended to do. The National Instant Criminal Background Check System didn’t fail here as the shooter had no criminal record on file and was, therefore, able to clear a background check (more than one, in fact). What failed, sadly, was law enforcement. The FBI received tips on more than one occasion that the shooter was planning his attack and people who knew him were concerned. The Broward Sheriff’s Officer went to the shooter’s home numerous times and still did not act to charge the shooter with a crime or figure out a way to restrict him from keeping firearms in his possession.
This is, in part, true. On the other hand, Nikolas Cruz reportedly purchased seven guns within the last year, while all of this was happening. There is more than one way to fix societal systemic problems, just like there is more than one way to treat all kinds of diseases; and most importantly, the best way to treat public health issues is to use any and every avenue available to you to make better and healthier changes.
