Almost nine months after the Parkland shooting, Ed Stack — the CEO of Dick’s Sporting Goods — stood up in the audience of a New York Times conference. He got up to talk about restricting gun sales at his stores. He had done it many times before, but this time, he got personal.
“I’m not embarrassed to say I’m viewed as a relatively tough guy,” Stack said. “I wouldn’t characterize myself as a crier. And that weekend, I watched those kids, and I watched those parents, and I hadn’t cried as much since my mother passed away.”
His highly publicized tougher stance on gun sales and outspoken push for reform turned the now-64-year-old into an unlikely corporate face of gun control. To Wall Street, the company’s new gun policy wasn’t out of line with its business interests. But to most Americans, this was a staid, dependable athletics store suddenly plunging into activism.
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