Dick’s Sporting Goods announced Wednesday they are making major changes to their firearms policies.
The company will no longer sell semi-automatic rifles in their stores, effective immediately. High-capacity magazines will also not be sold and stores will no longer allow people under the age of 21 to purchase any firearm.
The policy changes are a direct response to the Valentine’s Day shooting at Marjory Douglas Stoneman High School in Parkland, Florida, which killed 17 people.
CEO Edward Stack told The New York Times they had finally had enough.
“When we saw what happened in Parkland, we were so disturbed and upset,” he said. “We love these kids and their rallying cry, ‘enough is enough.’ It got to us.”
He continued: “We’re going to take a stand and step up and tell people our view and, hopefully, bring people along into the conversation.”
Beyond their own policy changes, Dick’s will also be encouraging lawmakers to enact “common sense gun reform” including bans on assault weapons and bump stocks, raising the age limit to purchase a firearm, and broader universal background checks that include previous encounters with law enforcement and mental health information.
The changes come after Stack said the store discovered they had legally sold a firearm to the shooter in November, but it was not the one used in the high school massacre.
“But it came to us that we could have been a part of this story,’’ he said. “We said, ‘We don’t want to be a part of this any longer.’”
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The company made changes after the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, taking semi-automatic rifles out of main retail stores, but they starting carrying them again at their retail chain, Field & Stream.
The changes are permanent this time, however.
"We're staunch supporters of the second amendment, I'm a gun owner myself," Stack said on "Good Morning America." "We don't want to be a part of this story and we have eliminated these guns permanently."
Chairman and CEO of Dick's Sporting Goods tells @GStephanopoulos why the company has decided to no longer sell assault style rifles or firearms to anyone under 21 years of age, and no longer sell high capacity magazines. pic.twitter.com/xiuMfqIZLd
— Good Morning America (@GMA) February 28, 2018
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