I remember several years ago standing at the gun counter of a local Dick’s, where an employee told me that he thought the company was “ideologically opposed to assault weapons.” He meant AR-15s and anything else that looked vaguely tactical. At the time, he was right. The only “black guns” on the wall behind him were a couple of Benelli 12-gauges and a pellet rifle.

That particular ideological conviction apparently went the way of the dodo once the company figured out they were losing tens of millions in lost sales. They even badgered Troy Industries into build their first complete rifle, a  tricked-out “loss-leader” designed to get Dick’s into the AR game in a big way.

Any else remember this in the sales flier?

After Adam Lanza shot up Sandy Hook Elementary a short time later, Dick’s turned tail and ran like a scalded dog away from the Ar-15 platform, leaving Troy high and dry.  This earned the ire of many in the shooting community, many of whom still refuse to shop at Dick’s to this day.

Still the mystery remained: whatever happened to all those Troy Carbines?

A source within the company is claiming that Dick’s will now unload their pre-SandyHook stockpile of Troy Carbines via their new Field  & Stream stores, while nominally keeping DSG-proper “assault weapon free.”

Aren’t convictions grand?