Newly released data from the California Department of Justice offers a store-by-store look at crime gun traces in the state’s largest cities, revealing that a single sporting goods location in Bakersfield has been linked to more recovered crime guns than any other actively licensed dealer in those cities.
Bakersfield Store Tops Crime Gun Trace List
Turner’s Outdoorsman on Mohawk Street in Bakersfield, situated across from an oil drilling site, sold more than 16,000 firearms over the past three years. During that same period, law enforcement traced 83 guns to the store from 2023 to 2025, the highest number for any store with an active firearms dealer license in California’s 10 most populous cities.
The store has operated since late 2020. The business that previously occupied the storefront, Second Amendment Sports—no longer an actively licensed dealer—had 100 sales traced to gun recoveries in Bakersfield. Combined, that means 183 firearms sold at that location were later recovered as crime guns in the same city during the three-year window. This total exceeds the combined figures for the top five dealers in any other city in the data, including Los Angeles, Oakland, and San Diego.
Community violence intervention workers in Bakersfield are taking note. Juan Avila, of the group Garden Pathways, said crime guns were a topic 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 added that tracking crime guns is 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 Appear Across Multiple Cities
Turner’s locations are among the top firearms dealers tied to crime guns in Los Angeles, Fresno, Anaheim, and Long Beach. A Sacramento-area store, just outside the city limits, was connected to 38 crime guns recovered in the capital. Sacramento Mayor Kevin McCarty said the prevalence of guns from that store, and from River City Gun Exchange—the dealer connected to the most crime guns for Sacramento—merits 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, suggest a mix of factors may explain 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 largest source of crime guns across California, according to the report released in July. From 2023 to 2025, law enforcement traced more than 8,500 crime guns to Turner’s. The retailer is California’s largest gun seller, with 540,000 firearms sold, representing 21.8 percent of all sales in the data’s three-year period. The chain accounts for an even greater share of guns sold and traced during that time: 25.9 percent.
This outsize share alarms gun safety advocates. “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 Brady United. “They have been a rash on this report for the last four years.” He noted that other large retailers like Bass Pro Shops and Sportsman’s Warehouse do not top the list and see smaller percentages of their sales recovered as crime guns.
Statewide, Turner’s locations in Southern California occupied the top eight 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. Hahn called for a probe into the company following The Trace’s initial reporting, and Brady later joined her in urging investigation.
Turner’s Outdoorsman drew 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 found to have been armed with a shotgun purchased at a Turner’s in Torrance.
Turner’s Outdoorsman did not respond to a request for comment for this story. In a June statement to The Daily Caller, a Turner’s executive said the company has a “proven commitment to regulatory compliance” and that trace data “does not indicate wrongdoing by the retailer.” ATF inspection paperwork from 2015 described one store’s recordkeeping as “meticulous.”
Violations and Trafficking Indicators
The new report shows state inspectors found a number of violations at Turner’s locations inspected in 2025. Many were minor, but an inspector identified a possible straw purchase violation at the San Bernardino location. That store was connected to more crime guns than any other dealer in the state: 781 from 2023 to 2025.
Guns sold at Turner’s stores appeared at crime scenes at a higher rate than guns from other dealers, and they did so quickly—less than a year after purchase—36 percent more often than guns from other dealers. Regulators consider a “time-to-crime” of less than one year an indicator of trafficking.
Guns reach crime scenes through various paths: some are stolen, others are bought through straw purchases (illegally buying a gun on behalf of someone else), trafficked into the underground market, or legally purchased by someone who later commits a crime. No other U.S. state publishes store-level crime gun data, and Congress has prohibited the ATF from sharing retailer-level data since 2003.
