(CNN) — Dick’s Sporting Goods will stop selling guns at 440 additional stores this year, escalating the company’s methodical elimination of firearms from its stores.
The move follows a series of decisions at Dick’s to scale back gun sales. A few days after the Parkland, Florida, school shooting in February 2018, the company announced it would stop selling semi-automatic weapons like the one used in the event.
A few months later, Dick’s pulled firearms and hunting accessories from 10 stores as a test. That went well: Overall sales increased at those stores. The company then pulled guns and ammunition from 125 additional stores in March 2019.
Now Dick’s plans to nearly quadruple the number of stores without guns, the company announced during its fourth-quarter earnings report Tuesday.
Dick’s CEO Edward Stack told analysts in March 2019 that the company would treat gun control “as a multi-year initiative,” and that he expected to remove guns from more stores in 2020. The company has been conducting a strategic review of its hunting business since the Parkland shooting.
Dick’s is the largest US sporting goods retailer, with 827 stores across the country. Walmart remains the world’s largest gun retailer.
The company reported $2.6 billion in net sales for the fourth quarter, up by 4.7% year over year. Its stock jumped by 13% after the announcement.
The-CNN-Wire
