Dick's banned assault rifles after the Newtown school shooting - and later reversed the decision
- Dick's Sporting Goods said Wednesday it would stop selling assault-style weapons in its stores.
- The chain also banned the weapons after the December 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
- Dick's ultimately started selling the weapons again, however.
- Dick's says the ban is permanent this time.
Dick's Sporting Goods said Wednesday that it would stop selling assault-style rifles and high-capacity magazines in its stores, in response to the school shooting Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 students and staff members.
This isn't the first time that Dick's has banned assault weapons.
The sporting-goods chain also ended sales of assault rifles in December 2012, following the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, that killed 20 students and six staff members.
At the time, Dick's had just offered AR-15 automatic weapons to customers at a discount as a Thanksgiving special.
Several months after banning the guns, Dick's started selling them again at its chain called Field & Stream, which specializes in hunting and fishing products.
To be fair, Dick's never said it was permanently removing the guns.
"We are extremely saddened by the unspeakable tragedy that occurred last week, and our hearts go out to victims and their families and to the entire community," Dick's said in December 2012. "Out of respect for the victims and their families, during this time of national mourning we have removed all guns from sale and from display in our store nearest to Newtown and suspended the sale of modern sporting rifles in all of our stores chainwide."
This time, the changes appear to be permanent.
"We're staunch supporters of the second amendment, I'm a gun owner myself," Dick's CEO Ed Stack said on "Good Morning America" on Wednesday. "We don't want to be a part of this story and we have eliminated these guns permanently."