And So It Begins: Dick’s Sporting Goods To Suspend Sales Of “Assault” Rifles, High-Capacity Magazines

This is definitely not the first time there has been a gun control push right on the heels of a horrific mass shooting in the United States. This time, though, the Left’s media push for gun control, or even outright repeal of the Second Amendment, has felt stronger and more pointed. It even includes a handful of attention hungry students from that Parkland high school that are fully committed to gun control, and maybe even auditioning to anchor CNN’s next show.(We’re looking at you, David Hogg)

The gun control storm, which shamefully distracts from the individual responsible for the massacre and the long list of mistakes made by law enforcement that could, and should have prevented this tragedy, also creates a public relations headwind for retailers that sell guns.

Dick’s Sporting Goods is one of those retailers, and their CEO Edward Stack announced that, in response to the Parkland atrocity, they will no longer be selling “assault” type weapons or high capacity magazines at their stores.

“”Based on what’s happened and looking at those kids and those parents, it moved us all unimaginably,” company Chairman and CEO Edward Stack said today on “Good Morning America,” referring to the Feb. 14 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, that killed 14 students and three educators.

“To think about the loss and the grief that those kids and those parents had, we said, ‘We need to do something,'” Stack, whose father, Dick, started the business 70 years ago, explained. “And we’re taking these guns out of all of our stores permanently.”

The move follows the revelation that Nikolas Cruz, the alleged gunman behind the shooting rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, bought a gun at Dick’s in 2017. It was not the gun nor the kind of gun used in the massacre, however.

“We did everything by the book,” Stack said of Cruz. “We did everything that the law required and still he was able to buy a gun. When we looked at that, we said, ‘The systems that are in place across the board just aren’t effective enough to keep us from selling someone a gun like that.’”

[…]

“We’re staunch supporters of the 2nd Amendment. I’m a gun owner myself,” Stack said. “We’ve just decided that based on what’s happened with these guns, we don’t want to be a part of this story and we’ve eliminated these guns permanently.””

Now, whether or not to sell these guns is completely with in the prerogative of any company and its owners or shareholders. It’s their choice to make.

However, the decision bolsters the theory pushed by the Left that the gun itself is responsible for such heinous crimes. This, of course, is a fallacy of logic, but Dick’s move only lends it credence while doing nothing to actually affect a change in culture and expectations of individual responsibility.

Stack said it himself, the decision is a public relations decision, because they don’t want to be part of “this story.”

That story is written by the Left. That story ends, if the Left has its way, with closing chapters containing a repeal of the Second Amendment and criminalizing gun ownership. Not a single line in that story actually speaks to preventing or eliminating mass murders, in schools, or anywhere else, because it can’t and it isn’t really designed to do so.

It is designed to increase control of the State over the Individual. Dick’s just corroborated the Left’s story.