“These establishments do not deserve my patronage.”
If we don’t support retailers who continue to sell firearms and especially handguns and those scary-looking rifles, the many DEI pressure groups will have won.
Not many big general sporting goods companies are left that do. Dick’s gave in and now is the darling of wall street even though its financials are worse. Academy continues selling self-defense firearms after being sued about and blamed for the Uvalde school attack.
Hopefully when the news cycle dies down Academy will quietly rehire these good folks the way Home Depot did, and look for better lawyers and insurance. After Uvalde I can’t imagine Academy’s board wouldn’t think that letting a firearm go out with a criminal isn’t different than basketball shoes.
Academy stores are in conservative states, where they would stand a better chance in court. Maybe what this situation and the Uvalde situation call for is those states (or Congress) passing laws relieving tort liability and providing public compensation for injuries (workman’s comp?) sustained protecting against gun crimes. It would be a more sensible crime fighting expense than most.
>If we don’t support retailers who continue to sell firearms and
No. If Lululemon wants to be the free yoga pants store and tell its employees to let that happen, that’s them and their bottom line. Worst thing that happens is hideous thug females wear gross pants.
When a FFL allows people to walk out the door with a firearm they’re creating a whole series of violent crimes that that thief will commit with that firearm.
Similarly: if someone buys a $$ pair of pants including the markup the store has to make to cover the free stolen ones, that’s their choice. When we go into our LGS and purchase legally:
- we fill out federal forms that (unlike Hunter Biden) will get us in jail if we make a mistake or lie;
- we undergo a background check wherein the federal government gets sent all that nice information (and doesn’t keep it ha ha) and decides if we’re worthy to finish a sale;
- The store and its employees severally put their livelihoods on the line every time that process occurs cause ATF is dying to shut down FFLs over typos;
- Then, finally, we have the privilege of paying $$$$, and still in some states and some firearms then registering same with local authorities;
- The FFL has to keep our records for decades, and ATF has been grabbing those illegally; and
- Depending on local law, we forever incur potential liability should a thief get their hands on that firearm and commit further crime, or we fail to report said theft.
So no, there’s no room for slack on our part. Especially big stores with big woke mentalities whose boards are all about their bottom line and not that a weapon just got stolen to go commit more crimes need to get with the program or do something else.
I’m not a lawyer but if I had anything to do with Academy I’d suggest they a) build out their store so it has a separate space for arms with friendly but locking doors; b) legally turn their firearms division into a sub-company and separate employees; and c) run their FFL business like everyone else’s, which is to say stealing a weapon becomes a stupid and probably fatal decision.
They won’t though, because their board is woke and they want the crime because far worse to them that people die or have their cars, possessions, even children stolen is that someone call their precious selves a name ending with ‘-ist.’