SHERMAN, TX-A national sports retailer Dick's Sporting Goods announced Tuesday hey will stop selling modern sporting rifles in their 500 stores nationwide to show respect for the Connecticut shooting victims and their families.

Several gun stores in Grayson county still have the AR-15s in stock and they will continue selling them. Tuesday, a local gun store owner and shopper tells us what they think of Dick's Sporting Goods decision to pull the semi-automatic rifles off their shelves.

Owner of Red River Firearms, Jason Webb said assault rifles are some of their more popular guns.

"We carry a lot of the Rock Rivers, we're sold out last week on some of the Ars. Rock River won't give us any sort of due date on the delivery because of the backlog," he said.

Tuesday, Dick's Sporting Goods announced its suspending sales of military-style rifles nationwide to show respect to the families and victims of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut last Friday.
But Webb thought that decision was a stunt.

"If they believe so hard of pulling which is their right to do, then they should pull all the product lines that are technically the category of an assault rifle," he said.

"That's good if that's their decision but as far as helping things, maybe some laws ought to be passed too 'if you buy a Bushmaster, buy a safe with it,'" said gun owner, Steve Fernandez.

Fernandez said he has semi-automatic rifles.

"I don't hunt with them, but I bought them for protection," he said.

But he said assault rifles shouldn't be the only ones in the spotlight.

"As far as I'm concerned, the Bushmaster is about as lethal as the handgun and the handgun is easier to conceal and I don't know if the Bushmaster should be the first thing to pick on," he said.

The National Rifle Association released a statement Tuesday saying they were "shocked, saddened and heartbroken by the news of the horrific and senseless murders in Newtown...The NRA is prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again."

Webb didn't believe the firearm was to blame.

"It comes down to the person because the it's the individual person not the firearm side of things because the person is the one who is the actor," said Webb.

Others said more thinking was needed.

"Someone can't just come up a week after a big problem and say they got they got the answer, it needs to be thought about carefully," said Fernandez.

Another retailer that sells the semi-automatic rifle is Walmart. They released a statement saying they have the Bushmaster AR-15 sold in a select number of stores, but they pulled the informational page on their website for the rifle in light of the tragedy.