Dick’s reports increased earnings amid push to reduce gun offerings

Dick’s Sporting Goods has reported an increase in its earnings amid a continued push by the company to remove guns from the inventories of some of its stores.

The sports and outdoor retailer reported a sales increase of 3.2 percent nationwide, which the company attributed to solid performances in e-commerce, in-store sales and apparel sales while noting in a revenue report that the company was “continuing the strategic review of its hunt business.”

The company reported that net sales for the second quarter of 2019 increased 3.8 percent and consolidated same-store sales increased 3.2 percent, compared to a drop of 4 percent for same-store sales during that quarter last year. 

{mosads}“Our key strategies and investments are working, our major head winds are behind us and we’ve bent the curve on sales,” CEO Edward Stack said in a statement. “We are very enthusiastic about our business and are pleased to increase our full year sales and earnings outlook.”

The sales rise follows concerns about a drop in revenue for the company last year after it announced that it would ban assault-style weapons from its stores and cease selling “bump stocks” — which allow semiautomatic weapons to fire at a higher rate — following a deadly mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla.

“Based on what’s happened, and looking at those kids and those parents, it moved us all unimaginably and to think about the loss and the grief that those kids and those parents had, we said, we need to do something,” Stack said last year after the shooting in Parkland.

Dicks went even further in March of this year, pulling all guns from shelves in 125 stores.

A pilot program last year showed that the company’s stores that replaced firearms with locally targeted merchandise outperformed other locations, according to The Washington Post.