Dick’s Sporting Goods’ politically correct decision to stop selling perfectly legal semi-automatic rifles after caving to Left-wing pressure has cost the franchise dearly in terms of profits and stock prices.

Earlier this week Reuters reported that the franchise reported a “bigger-than-expected drop in quarterly same-store sales” and worse, the company is now predicting further losses for the rest of the year following its gun-related policy decision.

Company shares fell as much as 10 percent, the newswire reported, following a 1.9 percent decline in same-store sales, after most analysts predicted a slide of about 0.62 percent.

Earlier this year, after the Left went wild following the February shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School because local authorities and school officials whiffed on adequately dealing with the suspect, Nikolas Cruz, despite loads of warning signs, Dick’s decided to virtue-signal to the country and opted to stop selling “assault weapons” – the Left’s description of semi-automatic rifles that resemble guns the military uses.

At the time the franchise’s CEO, Edward Stack, was aware that his decision would cost Dick’s some business. He said at the time that the decision will result in “people who don’t up anymore for anything.”

He was right. In March, reports noted that the chain was already seen sales declines of remaining guns – and everything else – though overall gun sales skyrocketed in March. (Related: David Hogg makes up LIE about NRA and gun sales, gets fact-smacked.)

Fortune reported:

Dick’s move last month at its three-dozen Field & Stream stores — extending a ban on assault-style rifles already in place at its namesake locations — came after a fatal shooting spree at a Florida high school. The company also raised the age limit to 21 from 18 on the purchase of any firearm. But the effect on its business remains to be seen.

By that time, company stock shares had already plunged by more than seven percent to $30.19 per share. In the preceding fall, Fortune reported, the chain’s stock was up on sales increases of 13 percent.

‘We expected some weakness…’

The latest financial information reported by Reuters shows that the bleeding is continuing, and not just because of a drop in guns sales: Purchases of Under Armour, a leading athletic brand, are also off.

Reuters said that company executives expected that changing its policy on all gun sales and restricting them to persons 21 and older would impact its sales, but not by as much. For the record, the federal age for rifle purchases is 18 and 21 for handguns.

The franchise also said it expected the virtue-signaling policy change to actually attract more Americans to its stores, but once again a Leftist-influenced business decision did not turn out the way it was supposed to.

On Wednesday, the company said it was expecting same-store sales to drop by three to four percent this year, compared to just a 0.3 percent decline the year before.

Mid-single-digit drops in sales year-over-year is a much bigger deal these days than it might have been even a decade ago thanks to stiff competition from online behemoths like Amazon (though you can’t buy guns from Jeff Bezos’ company). So, it’s very likely that Dick’s executives are – dare we say it? – sweating bullets over these sales declines.

“We had expected some weakness in hunting and electronics, as well as continued pressure in Under Armour and less benefit from store maturation, but these trends caused more pressure than anticipated,” said one economic analyst, Joseph Feldman, in an interview with Reuters.

Shares of Under Armour fell six percent to about $19.66 on the poor economic showing from Dick’s.

Is it too late for the franchise to reverse its decision? Probably not. But at the same time, there does not seem to be an urgency to do so, anyway. That means Dick’s retail sales will more than likely continue to fall as patriotic consumers who believe in freedom and the Second Amendment take their hard-earned dollars somewhere else.

Read more about Dick’s declining gun sales at Guns.news.

Sources include:

Reuters.com

NewsTarget.com

TheNationalSentinel.com