Dick’s Sporting Goods made a big announcement on Feb. 28 concerning their gun safety regulations after the Parkland Shooting. CEO Ed Stack announced, via the company’s Twitter page, that Dick’s and their affiliates would stop selling “assault-style rifles” and high-capacity magazines. 

The company also said they never have and never will sell bump stocks, as well as not selling a gun to anyone under the age of 21. Stack and Dick’s Sporting Goods have become the first major gun retailer to put restrictions on their own gun sales, which is a bold move in 2018 considering they are the biggest sporting goods retailer in the country with over 1,000 stores. I have worked at Dick’s for over two years and in my time there has been no announcement, or event within the company, that has carried this much magnitude. When our store manager told us what happened, myself, along with a lot of the other employees, thought we would receive backlash right from the time we opened our doors.

One of my fellow associates said, “I think we are going to lose so much business. Even though we are, for the most part, a ‘blue county,’ we are going to have a lot of angry customers who are no longer going to do business with us.” Little did we know, it would be the exact opposite. 

All day long we had customers coming up to us, thanking us and our company for taking a stance in the right direction. People came into the store, having never been in there before, saying they were going to start shopping from us just because of our announcement. This was baffling to all of us, because we were expecting much of the opposite reaction from our customers and the community. 

All day long, we were getting phone calls thanking us. One person came up to me and said “It is so nice to finally see someone, let alone a large company like yourselves, taking a stand and doing something to try and change the culture that is going on in 2018.” They also said they will now be regular customers thanks to our announcement. 

In my opinion, I think this will pay off in the long run for the company. Stack and company are always hands-on when it comes to doing things that make changes to improve the store. 

They have always made initiatives and advocated for youth sports and the communities that surround us.     

When thinking about it, I project some backlash and loss of sales for stores that are in predominantly Republican communities, but in the grand scheme of things, Stack will profit more because of the free positive press that was created from the announcement than he would have lost because of the A-R sales.     

The company has and will keep gaining new, loyal customers who will then reciprocate their feelings within their community, which have already been present in Sonoma County.