Maybe it’s unwise to take a store the size of a typical Best Buy and stock it almost exclusively with guns and ammunition.

Last spring, Minnesota-based outdoor gear retailer Gander Mountain launched a large expansion of a new store concept: the firearms super center. The stores—a half-dozen or so, opened in the Midwest—stood out because they were big (30,000 square feet) but more importantly because they sold guns, ammo, a range of gun accessories and gun-related gear, and little else.

At the time, the nation was still reeling in the aftermath of the Newton shootings, when gun sales were surging due to fear that tougher firearm regulations were inevitable, or just because of the simple urge to protect oneself. So the concept of a retail megacenter focused almost exclusively on firearms seemed like it would stand a reasonable chance of success.

“Taking a whole store and devoting it to guns is fairly radical but, from a business standpoint, it makes sense,” one retail analyst told the Columbus Dispatch in early 2013, around the time two Gander Mountain firearm super centers were opening in Ohio.

Lately, however, gun sales have been tanking. In February, the Wall Street Journal reported that in the further quarter of 2013 sales declined by 10% at Cabela’s, a direct Gander Mountain rival, largely due to a falloff in demand for guns and bullets. Cabela’s CEO referred to the previously soaring gun sales as a “bubble” triggered by the 2012 reelection of President Obama and a series of high-profile shootings, it was a bubble that had apparently burst. Sales were down 50% during the first month and a half of 2014 compared to the same period a year prior, which was just after Newtown, and Cabela’s has forecast subpar sales going forward. Likewise, background checks have fallen sharply in recent months, indicating that the once-frenzied pace of gun sales had subsided significantly.

Lately, Gander Mountain has been undergoing major remodeling initiative, and the result is that its firearms super centers now sell a lot more than firearms and directly related gear. A grand reopening of a super center in Grandville, Mich., takes place this weekend to introduce a new “flex” retail concept, in which there’s still a focus on firearms, but in which many aisles will also offer camping, fishing, boating, and other seasonal gear, as well as outdoor and active fashion apparel. A similar remodel, with a influx of new non-gun products, took place a month ago in a Gander Mountain near Toledo, Ohio. A company representative told the Toledo Blade that both the “flex” and firearm super center models were doing well, but that it made more sense to broaden the range of products at several stores.

It’s unclear to what extent, if at all, the larger nationwide gun sale slump played a role in Gander Mountain’s decisions to play down its focus on firearms. By some account, the remodel initiative has been in the works at least since last fall, before the most dramatic falloff in gun sales had become glaringly apparent.

Surely, the move is an effort by Gander Mountain to expand its customer base, in particular to reach younger consumers, including women and those who are fit and fashion conscious. In a recent tour of a new Gander Mountain store opened in the St. Louis area—the first in Missouri, and one of 23 new locations planned for 2014—company president and CEO Mike Owens explained to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the rows of brightly colored running shorts and T-shirts and apparel from Under Armour and other popular brands should make it apparent the store isn’t just for hunters and gun enthusiasts. “In a typical outdoor store, you’ll see a lot of black and gray,” Owens said. “We’re trying to attract men and women and, really, any active person.”

Google doubled the number of outstanding shares available Thursday to ensure that founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin maintain control of the company for years to come. The maneuver, called a stock split, will make it difficult for investors to gain a significant voting stake in the company.

Before Thursday, Google’s stock was split among Class A shares, which are publicly traded and worth one vote each, and Class B shares, which are held by early Googlers such as Page and Brin and are worth 10 votes each. The split doubled the number of available shares by halving the price of the stock and creating a new, non-voting category called Class C shares. The overall value of Google stock remains unchanged, but current investors will now own equal amounts of voting and non-voting shares.

With a huge pool of non-voting stock, Google will now be able to issue stock options to employees and complete acquisitions that are paid partially in stock without diluting the power of Page and Brin, who together control 56 percent of the vote at the company’s annual shareholders meeting. The deal will also make it more difficult for activist investors like Carl Icahn to swoop in and buy up enough voting shares to exert significant control over the company. Some have criticized the split, saying that the creation of a class of non-voting shareholders flies in the face of Google’s “don’t be evil” mantra. Investors originally sued to prevent the split, which was announced nearly two years ago, but Google settled before the case went to trial.

Both the Class A and Class C shares rose slightly in trading after the split, with the Class A shares fetching about a $2 premium when markets closed Thursday.

Attorney General Eric Holder says the Justice Department will investigate whether the lightning fast transactions violate insider trading laws

Attorney General Eric Holder said Friday that the Justice Department is investigating high-frequency trading to determine if it violates insider trading laws.

“The Department is committed to ensuring the integrity of our financial markets—and we are determined to follow this investigation wherever the facts and the law may lead,” Holder said in prepared remarks Friday for a hearing of the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the Justice Department.

High-frequency trading is when financial institutions, traders or brokers use sophisticated computer algorithms and high speed data networks to make lightning fast trades. For the Justice Department to find it illegal, it would have to establish that the traders are buying or selling a security while in possession of nonpublic information about the product.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said earlier this week that it too is probing high-frequency trading. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission are also looking into the practice.

The debate has gained increased public momentum—and some angry finger-pointing—due to Michael Lewis’ new book Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt, which alleges that the stock market is rigged against the average investor in favor of high-speed traders at hedge funds and investment banks. In the past week, the New York Times published an excerpt of the book and CBS’ 60 Minutes featured Lewis on its program.

The company that Google acquired for $3.2 billion says there's a flaw in its smoke detectors. Nest was worried that people would unintentionally activate a hand-waving feature and find the alarm not working during a fire

Nest Labs, the Silicon Valley darling that was recently acquired by Google, said Thursday that it was stopping sales of its smoke and carbon monoxide detectors over safety concerns.

CEO Tony Fadell posted a letter to Nest’s website that said the company is fixing a problem with the feature called Nest Wave, which allows people to wave their hands in front of the detector to temporarily disable the alarm. The company was worried that people would unintentionally activate the feature and find the alarm not working during a fire.

Nest has already remotely deactivated Nest Wave for all those who already have purchased the Nest Protect: Smoke + Carbon Monoxide alarm. Those detectors will continue to function.

The technical difficulty is a rare glitch for Nest. Google paid $3.2 billion to acquire the startup in January after it earned praise for its carefully designed products, which include both the smoke detector and a thermostat. Fadell previously worked at Apple on the iPod and iPhone. The Wave feature is just one of the many ways Nest is attempting to make mundane home devices more intuitive.

The environmental bankruptcy settlement involving Anadarko Petroleum Corp over pollution allegations is reported to be the largest ever

Global energy company Anadarko Petroleum Corp will pay $5.15 billion to those who claim that pollution from the company’s uranium deposits, wood creosote and rocket fuel processing caused cancer and other health problems. The agreement, which was announced on Thursday, ends years of litigation and is the biggest environmental bankruptcy settlement ever, Reuters reports.

The settlement still must be approved by a judge and a federal court after a 30-day public comment period.

“Beyond the unprecedented magnitude of this recovery, the timing of the settlement was critical to ensure the money is promptly available to victims overdue for relief,” John Hueston, the trustee for the plaintiffs, said in a statement.

U.S. Deputy Attorney General James Cole said in a news conference in Washington, D.C. that $4.4 billion of the settlement will go towards cleanup and environmental claims.

Andarko said in a statement tat it would net $550 million in tax benefits from the agreement.

[Reuters]