Throughout the 2020 shareholder season, companies have used the virtual meeting format adopted for COVID-19 restrictions to avoid facing tough questions from conservative investors.

In the traditional in-person meeting format, a CEO never knows what questions might come from the audience. Virtual meetings however give a company’s staff the luxury of cherry-picking questions about company priorities as well as softball questions and positive comments while ignoring or “not finding the time” to address probing or uncomfortable questions.

Dick’s Sporting Goods presents one of the most egregious examples of a company wanting to duck concerned shareholders. As a result, I am in limbo as to whether or not Dick’s CEO Ed Stack – son of Dick – is ever going to address my concerns about the logic of a sporting goods retailer actively turning away from gun sales. It’s a follow-up to my past in-person interaction with Stack that he clearly didn’t enjoy.

At the 2018 in-person Dick’s shareholder meeting, shortly after the company announced it would end sales of certain guns and accessories and impose age restrictions on remaining gun purchases, I warned Stack that he risked alienating more than just those seeking to buy guns. I predicted people would also stop shopping at Dick’s for golf clubs, tennis balls and non-firearm hunting equipment. At the time, Stack felt his policies would appeal to as many or more people as they offended. He personally told me it would be “fine” if I boycotted the chain.

So, my very pertinent question for Stack this year, which may never receive an answer, was:

Mr. Stack, when I warned at the 2018 shareholder meeting that you’d lose customers by restricting gun sales, you said it was “fine” if I no longer shopped at Dick’s. I haven’t, and it’s not just me. You told Business Insider that customer support for your anti-gun advocacy was “kind of short-lived,” and estimated losses at a quarter of a billion dollars. You’re continuing to shed guns and hunting departments, and sold Field & Stream locations to a competitor that is posting profits that exceeded forecasts. In the marketplace, hunting gear sales are expected to increase while gun sales are through the roof. How do you square your stakeholder advocacy with your fiduciary responsibility to shareholders?

Dick’s held its virtual shareholder meeting at 7:30am Eastern time today (that’s 4:30am for investors on the West Coast!). It lasted less than five minutes. There was no presentation – nothing as to how bad or good the company is doing right now. Just the election of board members and the confirmation of the accounting firm – basic meeting business. And there was no intention of actually taking questions during the meeting.

Launched in 2007, the National Center’s Free Enterprise Project focuses on shareholder activism and the confluence of big government and big business. Over the past four years alone, FEP representatives have participated in over 100 shareholder meetings – advancing free-market ideals about health care, energy, taxes, subsidies, regulations, religious freedom, food policies, media bias, gun rights, workers’ rights and other important public policy issues. As the leading voice for conservative-minded investors, it annually files more than 90 percent of all right-of-center shareholder resolutions. Dozens of liberal organizations, however, annually file more than 95 percent of all policy-oriented shareholder resolutions and continue to exert undue influence over corporate America.

• The Free Enterprise Project (FEP), the liberty movement’s only full-service shareholder and activism group that’s effective in pushing corporate America to the right;
• Project 21, the liberty movement’s only public relations agency for black conservatives and libertarians that has already created over 40,000 media opportunities;
• The Environment and Enterprise Institute (EEI), which counters misinformation being spread by the environmental left.