Dick’s Sporting Goods in Bangor has joined the store’s three other Maine locations which no longer carry guns.
An employee confirmed that the store removed the firearms and other hunting equipment in January. A wall in the store where the guns used to be displayed was empty on Monday.
Two years ago the South Portland location stopped carrying hunting equipment, including archery and firearms, after a corporate decision, a supervisor who declined to be named said Monday.
A supervisor in Augusta confirmed that the store stopped carrying guns in January. An employee in Topsham confirmed that the store no longer sold guns and that the decision was “recent,” but they deferred further questions to the company’s media team.
A company spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.
The move comes about three months after a mass shooting in Lewiston, the deadliest in the state’s history, although the store hasn’t said the removal was connected to the shooting.
Dick’s Sporting Goods began pulling guns from stores across the United States following the February 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, which left 17 dead. The gunman had bought a shotgun from Dick’s, though it was not the AR-15 rifle used in the shooting.
Edward Stack, the company’s chief executive, said he was moved by tragedy and immediately stopped the sale of assault-style rifles at his stores. He also raised the minimum age for gun purchases to 21.
In 2019, the company removed hunting departments from 125 stores. In March 2020, Dick’s announced it would remove them from another 440 stores.
In October 2019, Stack told CBS Sunday Morning that Dick’s had destroyed more than $5 million in military-style, semiautomatic rifles, which cost the company about a quarter of a billion dollars.
