Dick’s Sporting Goods Stops Selling Guns In More Stores

Dick’s Sporting Goods said another 440 stores would no longer sell guns this year, as the company moves to purge firearms from its retail stores, reports indicated Tuesday (March 10).

The retail chain announced the news in its quarterly earnings.

The move aligns with Dick’s resolution to reduce gun sales after the Parkland, Florida, school shooting in February 2018. The company pledged at the time that it would no longer sell semi-automatic weapons. Edward Stack, the company’s chairman and CEO, said he supports stricter gun-control measure

Following the tragedy, the company decided to clear its shelves of firearms and hunting paraphernalia from 10 stores to see if the move impacted business. In the end, sales increased at those stores. Dick’s then decided to remove guns and ammunition from another 125 stores last March.

The sporting goods retailer is now planning to nearly quadruple the number of stores without guns, the company said during its fourth-quarter earnings report Tuesday (March 10). Dick’s also reported net sales of $2.6 billion in for the fourth quarter, up by 4.7 percent year over year.

Stack told analysts last year in March that gun control would be handled “as a multi-year initiative.” He said he anticipated that guns would be cleared from more stores in 2020.

The biggest sporting goods retailer in the U.S., Dick’s has 827 stores across the country. Walmart is the biggest gun merchant worldwide.

In the company’s fourth-quarter earnings report, consolidated same-store sales in 2019 were up 3.7 percent.

“We are very pleased with our strong fourth-quarter results,” Stack said. “Despite the compressed holiday selling season and the challenging conditions we faced with unseasonably warm weather, we delivered a 5.3 percent comp sales increase, supported by increases in both average ticket and transactions, as well as growth across each of our three primary categories of hardlines, apparel and footwear.”

With better-than-expected revenues and earnings, Dick’s Sporting Goods’ eCommerce sales in May jumped 15 percent in the first quarter.