California data links crime guns to dealers. One Turner’s Outdoorsman location stands out

Turner’s Outdoorsman on Mohawk Street in Bakersfield, California, sits on a busy intersection across from an oil drilling site. Over the past three years, this sporting goods store sold more than 16,000 firearms — and also appeared hundreds of times during criminal investigations as the source of guns found at crime scenes.

In Bakersfield alone, law enforcement traced 83 guns to the store from 2023 to 2025, according to newly-released data from the California Department of Justice (CADOJ). That was the highest number for a store with an active firearms dealer license in any of the state’s 10 most populous cities.

The Trace reported in May that the Turner's Outdoorsman chain, which has more than 30 locations across California, accounted for a disproportionate share of crime guns recovered in the state. CADOJ defines crime guns as those used in a crime, suspected to have been used in a crime, or illegally possessed.

The latest data adds a new dimension, showing the number of crime guns traced to individual stores by law enforcement in the state’s biggest cities.

The Turner’s on Mohawk Street has been in operation since late 2020. The business that previously occupied that storefront, Second Amendment Sports, which is no longer an actively licensed dealer, had 100 sales traced to recoveries in Bakersfield. All together, that means 183 firearms sold at that location were later recovered by law enforcement as crime guns in the same city during this three-year window. That number is higher than the combined total of the top 5 dealers for any other city in the data, including Los Angeles, Oakland, or San Diego.

In Bakersfield, outreach workers are making links between the store and violence in the city. Juan Avila, of the community violence intervention group Garden Pathways, said crime guns came up at a recent meeting between the Bakersfield Police Department and local CVI groups. "Many of those were being traced to Turner's," Avila said.

He said that tracking crime guns was a newer metric for the city’s violence intervention workers. “That's really what grabbed my attention is to see how many guns actually can be traced back to a local shop,” Avila said.

In response to a request for comment, Bakersfield police spokesperson Sally Selby said the department is “unaware of there being any illegal firearms sales or transactions that are occurring.”

Turner’s outlets are among the top firearms dealers tied to crime guns in Los Angeles, Fresno, Anaheim, and Long Beach. One Sacramento-area store, just outside city limits, was connected to 38 crime guns recovered by law enforcement in the capital.

Sacramento Mayor Kevin McCarty said that the prevalence of guns from that store, and from the dealer connected to the most crime guns for Sacramento, River City Gun Exchange, merit scrutiny from state and local law enforcement “to see if there's any shortcomings in background checks and procedures to make sure that guns aren't getting in the wrong hands.”

Experts, including former ATF agents and researchers, said a mix of factors may be behind the number of guns traced to a store, including location, inventory, prices, clientele, and nearby competition.

One chain, 8,500 crime guns

The Turner’s Outdoorsman chain remains the biggest source of crime guns across California, according to the report released in July. From 2023 to 2025, law enforcement in the state traced more than 8,500 crime guns to Turner’s.

The retailer is California’s largest gun seller, and its sale of 540,000 firearms makes up a significant percentage of all sales in the data’s three-year time period: 21.8% . The chain makes up an even greater share of guns sold and traced during the time span: 25.9% .

The outsize share of crime guns alarms those who track these trends.

“Turner's is doing something on a corporate level — or they're not doing something on the corporate level — to prevent this,” said Christian Heyne of the gun safety group Brady United. “They have been a rash on this report for the last four years.”

Other large retailers like Bass Pro Shops and Sportsman’s Warehouse don’t top the list, he said, and see smaller percentages of their sales recovered as crime guns. Statewide, Turner’s locations in Southern California occupied the top 8 spots in the list of traces.

“People are being killed by the guns Turner’s sells, and it demands investigation and action,” Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn told The Trace about the new data. Hahn called for a probe into the company following the Trace’s initial reporting. Brady later joined Hahn in urging investigation.

Turner’s Outdoorsman attracted national attention this spring, after Cole Tomas Allen, who allegedly attempted to kill President Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents' Dinner in April, was revealed to have been armed with a shotgun he purchased at a Turner’s in the Los Angeles suburb of Torrance.

Turner’s Outdoorsman did not respond to a request for comment for this story. In a statement in June to the right-wing outlet The Daily Caller, a Turner’s executive said the company had a “proven commitment to regulatory compliance” and that data on traces “does not indicate wrongdoing by the retailer.” ATF occasionally inspects gun seller operations and called one Turner’s store recordkeeping “meticulous” in a 2015 report.

The new report shows state inspectors found a number of violations at the Turner’s locations inspected in 2025. Many were for minor issues, but an inspector identified a possible straw purchase violation at the San Bernardino location. The San Bernardino store was connected to more crime guns than any other dealer in the state: 781 from 2023 to 2025.

In the new data, guns sold at Turner’s stores showed up at crime scenes at a rate higher than guns sold at other dealers in the state.

The crime guns traced to the chain also wound up at crime scenes quickly — less than a year after purchase — 36% more often than guns from other dealers. Regulators consider a “time-to-crime” of less than one year an indicator of trafficking.

Guns take several paths to crime scenes. Some are stolen from their owners. Others are bought through straw purchases — the act of illegally buying a gun on behalf of someone else — or trafficked into the underground market. And some are legally purchased by a person who later commits a crime.

No other U.S. state publishes data on the stores connected to crime guns, and Congress has prohibited the ATF from sharing retailer-level data since 2003.