Dick’s, Inc., the parent company of Dick’s Sporting Goods and owner of Field and Stream magazine, has hired a lobbying firm to specifically advocate for more gun control, ostensibly above and beyond just the elimination of any firearm that resembles military-grade weapons.
In March the company used the Parkland, Fla., school shootings to announce it would no longer sell “assault weapons.”
The latest move by the chain to actually hire an anti-2nd Amendment lobbying group was one step too far for the firearms manufacturer Springfield Armory, a leader in the industry. The company has announced it will no longer do business with Dick’s, Inc. after the chain lobbied on behalf of new gun control legislation in Congress.
Noting further, Bloomberg News said Dick’s retained the Glover Park Group, according to disclosure forms filed late last month. Said Bloomberg: “The move is unusual for a firm in the retail sector, where few brands tackle such a politically-charged issue for fear it will turn off customers.”
Dick’s executives are making the moves in spite of the fact of falling sales across the board.
As NewsTarget reported in March — shortly after the company made its “assault weapons” decision — CEO Edward Stack was quoted in other media as saying that the retailer was experiencing “deeper than expected sales decline” of guns, for sure, but also everything else.
Shares of the company at that time had fallen 7.3 percent in a day; before the new firearms policies were implemented — which includes requiring buyers of all rifles to be at least 21 years of age, though federal law only requires buyers to be 18 years old — sales had climbed 13 percent since the first of 2018.
“As a gun owner, I support the Second Amendment and understand why, for many, the right to bear arms is as American as baseball and apple pie,” he wrote in the regularly anti-gun Washington Post, as The Daily Wire reported. “But I also agree with what Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in his majority opinion in 2008’s landmark Heller case: ‘Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.’ It is ‘not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.’”
Stack was unable to respond to how he would respect the Contitution’s wording that right “shall not be infringed” in the Second Amendment. That passage was supposed to prevent future generations of American jurisprudence from taking away a right they felt was fundamental.
And why does everyone who pushes for gun control preface their push with something like or similar to, “…I support the Second Amendment…”?
It was too much for Springfield Armory. After the revelations that Dick’s had hired a gun control lobbying firm the company announced via Facebook it was severing all ties with the retailer over its “attempts to deny the Second Amendment.”
“Springfield Armory is severing ties with Dick’s Sporting Goods and its subsidiary, Field & Stream” in response to the hiring. “This latest action follows Dick’s Sporting Goods’ decision to remove and destroy all modern sporting rifles (MSR) from their inventory. In addition, they have denied Second Amendment rights to Americans under the age of 21. We at Springfield Armory believe that all law abiding American citizens of adult age are guaranteed this sacred right under our Constitution.
“Their position runs counter to what we stand for as a company,” the gun maker continued. “At Springfield Armory, we believe in the rights and principles fought for and secured by American patriots and our founding forefathers, without question.”