Dick Stack opened his first store – a “bait and tackle” fishing supplies store – in Binghamton, New York in 1948. By the time his son Eddie was born in 1955, Dick had grown the business to include general sports merchandise, and by the early 1960s he built his first store, calling it “Dick’s Sporting Goods.” When son Eddie entered the business in 1977 they had two stores. Eddie had a knack, and the business grew. Dick let Eddie take over the business entirely in 1984 (Eddie was 29) and the two-store business became a chain operation by the early 1990s.

Today the business has 800 stores mostly in the Eastern United States, and owns and operates a golf specialty retailer, Golf Galaxy, True Runner and Field & Stream (no relation to the publication). Its Sports Authority and Golfsmith operations went bankrupt in 2016 and 2017, respectively. The business turned Eddie into a billionaire.

And, apparently, a liberal. When the Parkland, Florida massacre took place in February, Eddie issued a press release saying that one of his stores had sold a shotgun to the perp although he didn’t use it in the massacre. But Eddie used the incident as a reason to stop selling so-called “assault” rifles – semi-automatic (one squeeze, one shot) rifles at his primary outlets, numbering about 650 at the time. He said: