If you could have predicted that a major gun retailer making a policy against the interests of gun owners would end badly, you have more common sense than the management of Dick’s Sporting Goods.
Following this month’s horrific Parkland school shooting, Business Insider reports that this week the company announced that it would no longer sell any “assault-style weapons,” and that it raised the age to purchase any firearm from 18 to 21.
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In his statements this week announcing the change, Dick’s CEO Ed Stack unintentionally illustrated just how superficial all of this is:
“We don’t want to be a part of this story, and we have eliminated these guns permanently.”
In November, Dick’s sold a gun to Nikolas Cruz, the 19-year-old accused of killing 17 people at a high school in Parkland, Florida, on February 14, though a different gun was used in the shooting, according to The New York Times.
“Following all of the rules and laws, we sold a gun to the Parkland shooter in November of 2017,” Dick’s said in a letter to customers posted on its Facebook page. “It was not the gun, nor type of gun, he used in the shooting. But it could have been.”
Translation: Dick’s will stop selling guns that weren’t the murder weapon not because doing so will save a single life, but because they “don’t want to be a part of this story” — i.e., they want to appease the leftist hordes to avoid bad press. Kind of summarizes the entire gun control debate, doesn’t it? And while it’s too soon to tell how Dick’s customers will take the news, it’s hard to imagine the warm fuzzies this’ll win them from people who already hate guns will outweigh the loyal customers offended that they’ve bent the knee to gun grabbers.
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In response, the Tribunist reports, one soon-to-be-former Dick’s employee is taking a stand. Griffin McCullar has announced his resignation from the store with an open letter that deserves to be read in full:
“I am putting in my two weeks notice. I greatly apologize as my job here has been great; the staff is phenomenal and very easy to work with, the management is full of great people, and the pay is good. I do not have one bad thing to say about this store. However I cannot be the face of these new gun policies in affect [sic]. I find them morally and constitutionally wrong. I refuse to be part of a corporation with these liberal policies. Again I truly apologize for the inconvenience.”
“Sincerely, the 20 year old employee, that is an avid hunter, who can no longer purchase firearms from the store in which he is a salesman at the gun counter.”
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For good measure, under his signature McCullar quoted the Second Amendment and included an image of the Gadsden flag.
This is succinctly and perfectly put. It’s tragic that it had to come to this, but the fact that there are at least some young people willing to take a stand that’s certain to invite public ridicule should give all of us a glimmer of hope for the future.
