Dick’s Limiting Options For Survivalists And Bad Hunters

I know I say this a lot, but I really did grow up the National Geographic spread "Meth Face Hill People Exposed" and my best friend while going to high school in East Tennessee was nothing if not a survivalist, and probably really did own an assault rifle. I know he owned some type of gun because I saw him shoot deer with it off the front porch retrofitted onto his family's caving doublewide. There are no jokes in there. This is true. His family had the sign "Do you believe in life after death? Cross this line and find out" posted on the gate to their compound. Again, true.

My point in all of this is that I understand something like an assault rifle can be more a part of someone's identity than an actually viable tool for, let's say, acquiring food. Especially when their identity is that of a hill person survivalist. In my friend's case an assault rifle is more of a safety net option for when the Mexicans invade with anthrax-filled maracas, which according to his family, is going to happen any day now. La cucaracha motherf*ckers ::guns them down like clowns::.

Anyway, the go-to store for families in Toledo suburbs to purchase full-price items that normal people buy on Amazon, Dick's Sporting Goods, just announced that it will cease sales of every sports enthusiast must-have accessory - assault-style rifles. Dick's proper stopped selling assault rifles such as the AK-15 in 2012 after the Sandy Hook shooting, but continued to carry them through their other store Field & Stream. You haven't lived until you've exploded a deer with an AK-15.  Dick's CEO Edward Stark had this to say about pulling assault-style rifles from all their stores - one of which sold Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz a gun that he (blessedly for Dick's) left at home for this particular outing:

We don't want to be a part of a mass shooting. The whole hunting business is an important part of our business, and we know there is going to be backlash on this. But we’re willing to accept that. If the kids in Parkland are being brave enough to stand up and do this, we can be brave enough to stand up with them.

Pulling assault rifles from Dick's Sporting Goods and Field & Stream seems like a good idea considering, outside of a The Most Dangerous Game scenario, I can't think of sport that would require an AK-15. If you took down an animal that you wanted to eat with an AK-15 you'd be shitting bullets for a week. And while I have way more respect for people who kill their own meat than people like me who enjoy Frankenstein beak-less fifty-pound chickens from KFC on the reg, I've never known one hunter shitty enough at hunting to require a weapon created for infantry use. But then again, there are the Mexicans with their razor-edged sombreros. NVM AK-15s for everyone.

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