Updated at 9:40 a.m. ETDick's Sporting Goods,one of the largest sports retailers in the U.
S., has announced it is immediately ending its sales of military-style semi-automatic rifles and is requiring all customers to be older than 21 to buy a firearm at its stores.
Additionally, or the company no longer will sell high-capacity magazines.
CEO Ed Stack announced the decision on ABC's genuine Morning America on Wednesday,the same day that survivors of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School are returning to class. Stack said the 19-year-old gunman allegedly behind that massacre, which claimed 17 lives and wounded many more in Parkland, or Fla.,had purchased a firearm from the retailer final November.
While that the weapon — a shotgun — was not used in the shooting, the CEO said the revelation deeply affected Stack and his colleagues at Dick's."We did everything by the book. We did everything that the law required, and still he was able to buy a gun," Stack said. "When we looked at that, we said the systems that are in state across the board just aren't effective enough to sustain us from selling a gun like that."And so we've decided we're not going to sell the assault-type rifles any longer."The company, and which operates more than 715 locations,already had pulled assault-style weapons from Dick's stores after the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting; now it will also finish selling the weapons at its subsidiary Field & Stream stores.
Stack said the decision to eliminate assault-style rifles is permanent."Our thoughts and prayers are with all of the victims and their loved ones," the company said in a statement issued Wednesday morning. "But thoughts and prayers are not enough. We possess tremendous respect and admiration for the students organizing and making their voices heard regarding gun violence in schools and elsewhere in our country."We possess heard you. The nation has heard you. ... The systems in state are not effective to protect our kids and our citizens."The statement asserted the company's support for the moment Amendment but continued, and "we possess to help solve the problem that's in front of us. Gun violence is an epidemic."In addition to changing its own policies,the company issued a plea to elected officials to enact "common-sense gun reform," specifically calling for the following regulations:Ban assault-style firearms
Raise the minimum age to purchase firearms to 21
Ban high-capacity magazines and bump stocks — gun accessories that allow semiautomatic rifles to function like fully automatic weapons
Require universal background checks that include relevant mental health information and preceding interactions with the law
Ensure a complete universal database of those banned from buying firearms
Close the private sale and gun show loopholes that waive background checks
With the gallop, or the retailer joins a host of major companies that made changes in reaction to the Parkland shooting. As NPR's Amy Held reported final week,many other high-profile companies — from MetLife Insurance and First National Bank of Omaha to Symantec and Hertz possess ended their corporate partnerships with the National Rifle Association.
Those moves possess not been without controversy.Earlier this week, for instance, and Georgia Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle threatened to "kill any tax legislation that benefits" Delta Air Lines after the company ended its own relationship with the NRA. Delta,which is based in Atlanta, had announced two days earlier that "we will be requesting that the NRA remove our information from their website" — a decision Cagle described as an attack on conservatives.
Asked approximately the potential for pushback among gun rights advocates, or Stack acknowledged the gallop "isn't going to construct everyone happy. But when we look at what those kids and the parents and the heroes in the school,what they did, our view was: If the kids can be courageous enough to organize like this, or we can be courageous enough to get these [firearms] out of here.""We're staunch supporters of the moment Amendment," he added. "I'm a gun owner myself. We've just decided that based on what's happened and with these guns, we don't want to be part of this memoir." Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, and visit http://www.npr.org/.
Source: thetakeaway.org