The headline: Dick’s Sporting Goods stops selling “assault rifles” and “high capacity” magazines! In reality, Dick’s stopped selling modern sporting rifles and standard capacity ammunition magazines in 2012, after the Newtown massacre. Only their Field & Stream subsidiary continued to sell ARs and “hi-cap” mags. But here’s the thing . . .

The company’s official statement goes WAY beyond simply announcing that they “don’t want to be part of the story” of mass shootings. Check out the raft of gun control measures listed in their official statement:

Dicks-Sporting-Goods-Statement-in-favor-of-gun-bans

The retailer is actively lobbying for universal background checks (i.e., federal gun registration) and a national gun owners’ registry — as well as Federal bans on “assault weapons,” “high capacity magazine,” bump stocks.

Dick’s is now an out-of-the-closet gun control advocate, itching to help the civilian disarmament movement push its anti-2A agenda. Anyone who supports American firearms freedom who spends a dime at Dick’s is helping degrade and destroy their natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms.

So now you know.

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82 COMMENTS

  1. That’s a long-winded suicide note. I doubt very many progressive types shop at sporting-goods stores. And Dick’s just very publicly announced that they don’t want any more business from the people who actually purchase the goods they sell.

    Oh, and by the way, Dick’s: you should apply that “if it saves even one life” criterion to every item you offer for sale – many of which have been used to take more lives than evil, black rifles. It will help your eventual liquidation efforts, since your shelves will be nearly barren.

    • I guess you aren’t familiar with their stores. The hunting/shooting department is abysmal, with only a dozen or two bolt action rifles and shotguns, and a small assortment of ammo, kept behind the counter. The vast majority of their shelves are actual sporting goods, golf, baseball, basketball, soccer, hockey, etc supplies. These stores are actually full of anti 2A types. That’s why it’s so easy for them to make this statement. Cabela’s or the like WOULD go under for something like this, but I suspect Dick’s will be losing a fairly small portion of their customers over it.

      • The vast majority of their shelves are actual sporting goods, golf, baseball, basketball, soccer, hockey, etc supplies.

        As someone else has already pointed out – and to which I alluded above – those items all constitute “blunt instruments”, which are annually used to kill more people than rifles of all types. If it saves just one life…

        • You have no clue Chip. Dick’s is full of people in my town. The great masses pay no attention to stuff like this. It just doesn’t matter to them. Some of my firearm enthusiastic colleagues live in a small echo chamber. TTAG, CTH, SDM, etc. No clue about the other 99%.

          • Do you cobtribute anything of value in the comments here, or do you just repeatedly tell other commenters that they have no clue, and are marginalized?

        • To make the whole thing even more ridiculous, Field & Stream will continue to sell Ruger Mini 14s and Springfield M1As.

          The day I heard they announced they would stop selling “assault style rifles” I headed to the nearest F&S store over my lunch break. In New Yorkistan F&S was only selling “compliant” featureless rifles to start with, so I was curious about whether they considered neutered New York compliant ARs “assault style rifles”. Sure enough, they had taken all of the AR15 variants off the racks. But, they had 3 Mini 14s in stock and when I asked about an M1A the clerk said they didn’t have any in stock but would be happy to order one for me.

        • For years I have spent a LOT of money there. Not anymore though. Myself and ALL of my friends will shop at Bass Pro, Cabela’s, or any one of many small gun shops. You messed up Big Time and now you can reap your benefits. Good bye and good luck.

      • The “vast majority of their” stock is overpriced Chicom produced rags for the yuppies impressed by expensive “prestige” branding. Like a buttload of competitors.

        Their camping/outdoor section is a joke mostly paralleling Walmart with the same Chicom mg brands/SKUs.

        Ammo selection if very limited and vastly overpriced. The only unique section in my region is a fair selection of lower to mid market price bikes.

      • Right? My grandparents live in Prescott AZ, near a Dick’s that has been known to have some really nice Black Friday sales. And other than the occasional post-Thanksgiving shopping spree (of which Dick’s has only ever received a small fraction of my money), they are a joke. There was one in my hometown, and they didn’t last for more than a few months. Honestly, they’re not unlike Bass Pro Sho the majority of the time: abysmal selection and far above average pricing

    • I imagine that a lot of progressives are into outdoor sports. Dicks might do fine. I doubt they would have done this without researching their customer base demographics. I don’t even know what portion of their sales guns represent. Fudds will also still shop there.

  2. Yeah? Well some say enticing unaccountable, over paid, arrogant bureaucrats to actually do their underlying job might go a long way to preventing violence. Oh well, at least the company name is appropriate.

  3. Screw Dick’s. Haven’t been in their store since their original policy of not selling AR’s. There are so many stores out there that want my business.

    • I went into one in maybe 2014, because I was on the way to the range and realized I forgot ammo and needed 9mm and was like 30 minutes past the next closest place I knew of that would have ammo. Turned out their stance was basically “ewwww, we don’t sell handgun ammo.”

      Dicks.

  6. Ghost of of Bill Ruger. Use government to force everyone to do what they’re doing so any would-be customers might not shop elsewhere. As if anybody bought any of that stuff from Dicks to begin with.

      • His comments, and the resulting effect on his company, are quite educational. Despite having happened almost 40 years ago, there are STILL people who refuse to buy their products because of Bill Ruger’s comments. Quite amusing, given that the MSM continues to paint gun owners as super-minorities… and yet we apparently have the power to destroy large companies. Pretty impressive given that we “apparently” only represent a single digit percentage of the population, no?

        (/sarc)

  7. Just built a Dick’s in my area, was going to check it out, guess I won’t be now. Then again it might be fun to go to a waste some sales persons time with no intention of buying.

    • Good luck on finding one (unless in the clothing/shoes sections). As bad as a Homedepot.

    • Don’t waste your time with one-on-one with the workers. The workers are probably minimum wage drones who don’t care if you’re talking to them or they’re picking their noses. If you want to have fun, get a bunch of high dollar stuff they have to open cabinets for, etc. Fill the cart up to the top with the smallest things you can find. Go to the checkout line. Let them ring you up. Get the extended protection plans. When it’s time to pay, either say you forgot your wallet, or announce that you just remembered that they’re a bunch of anti-2A idiots and you don’t want to do business with them. As you go out the door, they get to clear out your order and restock everything while everybody behind you waits.

      • the workers there are probably minimum wage drones who don’t care if your talking to them or they’re picking their noses.

        you almost had the triumvirate.

  8. “We deeply believe that this country’s most precious gift is our children.”
    Except for the 300,000+ children killed every year by abortion.
    “They are our future”
    Except for the 300,000+ children killed every year by abortion.
    “We must keep them safe”
    Except for the 300,000+ killed every year by abortion.

    Makes total sense. Dicks

  10. Based on the last finalized “Crime in the United States” report published by the FBI in 2016, 472 murders were committed using “blunt objects” in that year. I suppose that Dick’s ought to consider its stance on selling baseball bats, golf clubs, free weights, and anything else that could be considered “blunt objects”. Or, perhaps they should just close up shop because they consider their customer-base to be criminals, idiots, or both.

    • Hell, Colorado DOC, not all that long ago, banned free weights above certain custody levels because too many inmates were using them to bash in the skulls of other inmates. Not that I’m shedding any tears for them (that’s how Dahmer was killed, and if any individual ever deserved to burn in hell, it was him), but it’s quite indicative: murder lives in the human heart, not in the tools he (or she; I’m not sexist) uses to commit such acts. Folks who desire to murder will always find a way.

      I always find it amusing that the antis fixate so heavily on guns. Always fun to ask them about the violence, even person-to-person (as opposed to military violence), of the Renaissance era, when firearms were just matchlocks (which had so many drawbacks that swords and knives were still FAR better under the vast majority of circumstances). And yet the murder rates were sky high, even without guns….

  12. Dick’s, I think, makes most of its sales from other, none firearms sports. Like Sports Authority they don’t expect to see an adverse effect on their bottom line. I will not shop,there .

    • Sports Authority went bankrupt. Anything that you might see that’s SA today was bought up by Dick’s.

  13. As of Wednesday morning, they still had tactical shotguns on their website. 870 Tactical Express killed a bunch of people in the Colorado movie theater and the Navy Yard.

  15. Why do all of these idiots proclaim they are supporters of the 2A then go on and propose a bunch of infringements? Do they think anyone will believe them just because they state they support it? Give me a break. If it’s for the children then fight to ban abortions. I didn’t shop at Dick’s so claiming I won’t shop there from now on won’t do squat to their bottom line.

    • That’s exactly what they think. I was listening to NPR the other day (my boss listens to it; I was riding in the company truck, and the job site was only a few minutes away from the shop; not enough time for even a single song from my phone) and some CT senator was talking about their post Sandy Hook gun laws and said, “we don’t infringe on anyone’s Constitutional Rights”. I had to laugh. As long as mechanisms are in place to allow one single person in the entire country of 350 million or so to privately own a single, break action .22, no matter how many absurd hoops they have to jump through, they will scream that they “respect the 2nd Amendment” and that “nobody is coming for your guns”. They know that civilian disarmament (I’m sorry, ‘gun control’ is a losing issue, so they have to do everything possible to paint us as the extremists)

  16. Well it ain’t just sporting goods at the DICK store. You can get yoga pants too. The Dick’s near me has the worst customer service EVER and I’ve never bought a damn thing from their shite store…Dick’s sux.

  17. Sadly, brain stem only soccer mom (m/f) types will still spend their money at this overpriced ANTI AMERICAN store (s). Shameful.

  19. This is not just political activism or virtue signaling. This is Dick’s oath of allegiance to the government which by its nature is always for gun control. Business colluding with govt = fascism.

    • Minor correction. 🙂 Fascism is hardcore socialism where all businesses are supposed to be owned and operated by the government. It is very much like Communism. The confusion is that Hitler bent the rules a little. He knew that he did not have enough political clout to support his plans unless he included some of the owners of large businesses, so he made a few compromises, which pissed off a few of his followers at the time. Rest assured, the Nazis were not capitalists by any means, and it is likely that these businesses would have been seized at some point if the Allies hadn’t won the war when they did.

  20. Rock’s is, IMHO, worthless except for a couple things.

    They’re good for testing outbgolf clubs and putters before you buy them online. Ditto certain fishing stuff.

    They’re good for doing the same thing with kid’s sports stuff like cleats, shin guards, batting helmets etc.

    In recent memory I’ve bought a few things from them total. A golf glove ($20 cheaper than the pro shop at the links) and some Olympic sized weights so I didn’t have to drive to Arvada.

    Other than that everything is overpriced and their sales staff are not knowledgeable.

    • I applied at Cabellas once for a second job and found that their gun salesmen were only paid $11/hr and weren’t allowed to carry in the store. The department manager told me that “if someone came in and started shooting the place up, they didn’t want there employees to be targets.” I asked him if they told their gun customers their theory that having a gun made them a target and then asked if he really thought the employees wouldn’t be targets because they didn’t have guns, and he admitted that he didn’t exactly think it was a good policy but that he needed the job. I told him that I wasn’t going to disarm for $11/hr. Never gone into a Cabellas since.

      • Sounds about right for most big businesses. Their real reason is money. Scenario 1, criminal shoots up the store to steel a gun killing several customers and clerks. No one employed by the store is armed and prepared to stop the criminal. Scenario 2, a criminal comes to the store intending to kill customers and clerks to steel a gun. An employee stops the threat by killing the criminal, and no one but the criminal dies. In both cases, the families of the deceased sue the store. In our liberal court system, what scenario will cost the company the most? See, the lawyers who advise these companies and the management team do not care that innocents will lose their life. They only care about how much money they will lose to the family of a dirt bag.

  21. Assault(-style) weapons. “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Saul Alinsky.

  22. “if even one life is saved…”
    Guns save many more innocent lives than they take. This is something leftists will never acknowledge and most do not even comprehend. When we say it, they look at us like we’ve just spoken in some unknown tongue.

  23. If they believed their BS they would close their entire firearms section. They modeled everything on GanderMountain anyhow. Poor selection; over priced; terrible customer service from dimwits. Makes Walmart look good.

  26. Dick’s was already circling the drain. their numbers have been down and their outlook was bleak, even before this mess.

    This is just one last pitiful cry for attention.

  29. Dick’s has been transitioning out of hard lines and into soft goods for years now. It’s Kohl’s with a gun rack, and most of the soft goods are overpriced Asian sweatshop production.

    The company’s business model is based on understaffing. Competitors have from four to ten times the number of employees on the floor at all times, so poor customer service is a given.

    The gun inventory consists mainly of inexpensive shotguns and rifles from Mossberg, Stoeger, Ruger and Remington. Unless there’s a sale, expect to pay full boat retail. Dick’s in-house Field & Stream ammunition brand is made in Bosnia or Italy, with shotshells coming from Federal in Minnesota. Boxes are clearly marked to show country of origin.

    Dick’s stock price declined 40% in the last year. Same store sales are down marginally, with gross sales improving slightly due to additional stores being opened. Christmas saved Dick’s last year.

    The only thing that Dick’s sells that can’t be purchased cheaper on-line from Amazon etc. are guns and ammo, so it would be stupid for Dick’s to abandon the shooting business. Which doesn’t mean that they won’t do so.

    The CEO’s sister ran for Congress as a Democrat in 2016, and he donated $300,000 to a super PAC supporting House Democrats.

    • “Kohl’s with a gun rack”

      Best description.

      I went there once for a Black Friday sale. Waited for hours at the gun counter, finally got my turn… and got turned away because, quote “it’s illegal to sell a gun to someone whose drivers licenses address is wrong.” Later that day (after the rush) I went across the street to Sportsman’s Warehouse and bought three guns I didn’t even want just give them the money I had allotted for Dicks.

      Turns out the XT22 is a pretty decent plinker, and the NAA mini is surprisingly useful. Got rid of the Taurus, though.

      • “Kohl’s with a gun rack…”

        You sir, win the internets comments of the day….

  30. Firearms were one of the few things Dicks could sell that Amazon can’t. Now Dicks will be roadkill for Amazon within 5 years.

  31. Wrote Dick Heads off in 2012 and haven’t missed a thing,I won’t transact business with Anti American Prick’s.

  32. That’s too bad, because my local Dick’s Sporting Goods had a firearms department that had excellent customer service. They actually refunded my money out of their own pocket after a rifle I bought from them turned out to be a lemon (a dangerous lemon) and the gun manufacturer refused to do a warranty repair.

    FYI, the dangerously defective gun was a Rossi Circuit Judge Rimfire (made in Brazil), and its quality was worse than a toy cap gun! Of all the many guns I’ve bought in my life, this was by far the worst quality, dangerous, unsafe, poorly fitted, and unreliable. The Rossi Circuit Judge Rimfire is a revolver rifle (a long-barreled revolver), so you’d think that because it’s a revolver at LEAST it would be reliable in the sense that when you pull the trigger it should go “bang” every time, but no! When you pulled the trigger on this Rossi, it would jam half the time, in both single-action mode and double-action mode, or turn into a 50-pound trigger instead of a 5-pound trigger! When it did fire, it sent hot gasses, hot gunpowder, and I believe lead fragments into the shooter’s face on every other shot (good thing I was wearing shooting glasses, or I’d be blind, but it was still painful to get in the face with gunpowder and lead fragments every other shot!)

    Rossi refused to repair or replace the gun, which was supposed to be under warranty, so Dick’s took the gun back and reimbursed me out of their own pocket. Ever since then, I’ve been praising Dick’s (no pun intended!!!) and boycotting Rossi, but now I guess I have to boycott both companies.

  33. Now that we can no longer count on corporations to just sell stuff and stay the hell out of politics, the NRA needs to step in and start treating them like politicians. I want to see grades assigned to all the companies whose leadership has imposed their personal views on their employees and customers.

    Lets see how much their investors like a defacto boycott by 5 million NRA members after Dick’s gets an F.

    • Considering we’ve already done most of the groundwork for them, it would be relatively easy. I’d refer to such a list.

  34. Meme I received, “Cabela’s sells rifles to 18-21 year olds because they aren’t Dicks”.

  37. Hmmm…looks like I may have to ditch Dick’s…
    Good thing I have Academy here in Orlando…and quite a few LGSs, too.
    I think Academy hid the MSRs after Sandy Hook…but they did not stop selling them.
    Sort of like the adults only magazines used to be.

  38. Add Dicks and REI to the list of compamys that I will no longer do any business with.

  39. Last time I was in a Dicks they tried to chage me sales tax on a pair of shoes I was going to buy. However, my state which this Dicks was in, does not have sales tax on any footware, common knowledge for everyone except for Dicks. So even though they were chaging me for a nonexisting tax and pocketing it. They refused to charge me the correct amount so I said forget it, and never went back. Figures a gun grabbing chain are also ripoffs.

    • Major corporations do not of course OPENLY cheat customers.

      Your story is a smear.

      You were simply too much of a doofus to grasp how the footwear exemption works, ie it didnt magically go into effect the instant you heard about it, and their is a cap above which you are charged sales tax etc

      Youre banned from my shop too btw, I wont have donkeys clogging the aisles and braying

      • Your smear is a smear.

        Major corporations absolutely do openly cheat customers. Electronics retailers that push worthless and unusable third-party warranties. Convenience fees for print-at-home tickets. Banks that charge you a fee for assessing a fee, and then charge interest.

        When I was in college, I made bank hitting store targets by selling expensive 35mm SLR cameras to soccer moms who came in looking for a point-and-shoot 110, and then selling them a service plan that consisted of us taking the camera and sticking it in a closet for three days before calling them to come pick it back up. We had a premium developing service that cost twice as much as the standard service, and consisted of us running down to the Kodak shack for 1-hour processing and then stuffing the pics in our envelopes.

        I’ve absolutely seen places charge sales tax a non-taxable food stuffs, just because they don’t differentiate one type of product from another.

        But hey, I guess I”m banned from your store too. Happily, I don’t need to buy boxes of horse shit retail, I can just get it from your comments.

  40. You picked the topic Dipstick Bennett namely yalls racist trope (endlessly repeated without evidence) that a disproportionate number of criminals being black accounts for/explains the police disproportionately shooting unarmed black folks

    And I cited indisputable evidence in the form of a peer reviewed study (what you stupidly dismiss as the ““substance” (such as it is) of this comment”) correcting your racist excuse/delusion:

    “There is no relationship between county-level racial bias in police shootings and crime rates (even race-specific crime rates), meaning that the racial bias observed in police shootings in this data set is not explainable as a response to local-level crime rates.”
    http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0141854

    The reality of racism/implicit bias in policing remains:

    “The results provide evidence of a significant bias in the killing of unarmed black Americans relative to unarmed white Americans…”
    http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0141854

    And so there is of course nothing admirable or “remarkable” as you say that the police are not even more disproportionately killing unarmed black folks

    Chip Bennett says:
    December 13, 2017 at 13:24
    Ballpark, according to FBI UCR data, the rate of black-perpetrated violent crime is eight times the rate of white-perpetrated violent crime. In that context, it is remarkable that the rate of police-involved shootings of black suspects is a mere 2-2.5 the rate of police-involved shootings of white suspects.

    Chip Bennett says:
    March 2, 2018 at 08:49
    Clean up on aisle seven…?

    And no, I’m not even going to address the “substance” (such as it is) of this comment, because it is entirely off-topic.

  42. At one time, before the mid-80’s, Dick’s was the place to go for hunting, fishing and good,solid outdoor clothing. Originally 2 stores in the Binghamton NY area started by Dick Stec. His sons took it from local to big box in one step. Their firearms dep’t was second-to-none. Great selection, good and fair prices. In that era buy, sell and trade was was the way they did business. You’d see Dick’s sons, Ed and Dick Stec out on the floor stocking shelves and racks. When they went public, that was the beginning of end. BTW, back then I was a customer and always received pleasant, knowledgeable customer service. Ahhh, those were the days.

  43. Ed,
    That was an interesting history
    I had no idea Dicks used to be a good store
    In my experience it has always been a store that charges full MSRP on everything
    I only go in there to handle things before I buy from Amazon

  44. If I already commented on this, forgive me. Can’t remember if I did or not. Never been to DICK’S and now definitely won’! Not even sure if the one in this area is still open. Do know from a friend that this one mostly catered to golfers. What a crap company!!

  46. Not much of a sporting good store when they don’t even know the difference between assault rifles and every day hunting and sporting rifles..

    If they where sell assault rifles then they must of been doing it by code because I never seen an assault rifle on there shelf’s maybe the ATF should do some checking into them..

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