Dick’s Sporting Goods Destroys $5 Million Dollars Worth of Guns

Dick's Sporting Goods CEO Edward Stack appeared on CBS News during a segment on how corporations are addressing gun issues.

According to The Tampa Bay Times, Dick's Sporting Goods, one of the largest gun retailers in the country, pulled firearms like the AR-15's from all its stores after the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012. Stack also told CBS that he decided to turn $5 million worth of guns into scrap metal after he found out that the Parkland shooter had purchased a gun from one of the Dick's Stores. That gun however, was not used in the shooting, but just knowing the shooter purchased a gun from Dick's, was enough for Stack to take action.

Stack told CBS, that he went to meet with the Parkland survivors. That trip he says, inspired him to change Dick's Sporting Goods' policy to no longer allow the sale of firearms to anyone under the age of 21.

Instead of taking the AR-15 that his stores had in stock and selling them to another distributor, he decided to turn the guns into scrap metal. $5 million worth of guns in total were destroyed. A move that he said cost his company about $250 million in revenue.

When asked about what kind of backlash the company received after removing the guns, Stack told CBS,

“All we were going to do was just take it off the shelf and not say anything. We probably get a little bit of a backlash, but we didn’t expect to get what we got. All this about, you know, how we were anti-Second Amendment, you know, ‘we don’t believe in the Constitution,’ and none of that could be further from the truth. We just didn’t want to sell the assault-style weapons that could inflict that kind of damage.”

Stack himself is an avid hunter and gun owner.

Dick's Sporting Goods started here Binghamton back in 1948. Ed's Father, Richard Stack, started the business on Upper Court Street as Dick's Bait and Tackle.

Watch the full CBS interview below:

[via: Tampa Bay Times/CBS News]