Supervisor Janice Hahn was joined by a national anti-gun violence group on Thursday asking for an investigation of a chain of gun stores in L.A. County, including one in Torrance where alleged gunman Cole Thomas Allen bought a firearm used in an attempt on President Trump’s life.
In a letter to District Attorney Nathan Hochman, Hahn asked for an official probe into the practices and sales at Turner’s Outdoorsman’s eight county locations, including the store in Torrance on Hawthorne Boulevard where the retailer sold a Mossberg, pump-action 12-gauge shotgun to the Torrance resident who stormed a Washington, D.C. hotel hosting the White House Correspondents Association Dinner on April 25.
Allen allegedly used the weapon during what federal prosecutors charged was an assassination attempt on President Donald Trump and other members of his administration at the Washington Hilton. The shooting injured a Secret Service agent and prompted a major federal response. Allen was also charged with assaulting an officer or employee of the United States with a deadly weapon, transportation of a firearm and ammunition in interstate commerce with the intent to commit a felony, and with discharging a firearm during a crime of violence.
Hahn said a high number of firearms sold at Turner Outdoorsman stores have been recovered at crime scenes. Citing California Department of Justice data, between 2022 and 2024 nearly 8,000 crime guns in California were traced back to Turner’s locations, more than any other dealer in the state.
The Torrance store alone accounted for 624 of those weapons, ranking second among all individual gun retailers statewide, Hahn said. Other Turner’s locations in Norwalk, Signal Hill, and Pasadena also rank among the top five.
Hahn cited the state DOJ data, saying firearms sold by Turner’s Outdoorsman are 35% more likely to end up at crime scenes as compared to those sold by other dealers. Also, guns from Turner’s are more likely to be used in a crime within a year, which regulators consider a potential trafficking activity, Hahn wrote in a prepared statement.
In a recent Board of Supervisors meeting, Hahn called the data “an alarming record” that demands investigation. “Every day, guns sold at Turner’s locations in L.A. County turn up at crime scenes. These guns are used to kill, to injure, to rob, and to intimidate. They have inflicted immeasurable harm on Los Angeles County residents, and we should wield every tool we have to protect people,” she added.
The board declared Friday, June 5 Gun Violence Awareness Day, and that extends throughout the month of June. Olaina Anderson, with Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, asked county residents to wear orange from June 5 to June 9. Orange is the color hunters wear for safety in the wilderness.
In 2024, there were 728 firearm-related deaths among Los Angeles County residents. In 2026 so far, there have been 121 mass shootings in the United States. Second District Supervisor Holly Mitchell pointed out that gun violence surpassed auto accidents as the leading killer of young people.
While statistics like these are unsettling, the country’s Second Amendment allows the possession of firearms. Still, L.A. County and gun violence prevention groups have been advocating for stricter gun control laws for decades, to limit the flow of guns used in crimes or suicides.
Joining Hahn is the nationally known group, Brady United Against Gun Violence. The group’s advocacy took off after the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan in 1981 that left White House Press Secretary Jim Brady paralyzed from a bullet to the head. He and his wife, Sarah, fought for the Brady Bill, that was signed into law in 1993 by President Bill Clinton. The law required background checks on all handgun purchases from federally licensed firearm dealers.
Brady United Against Gun Violence sent a letter to Hochman on Thursday, June 4, echoing “Supervisor Hahn’s call for an urgent investigation of Turner’s Outdoorsman.” It was signed by Suzanne Verge, president of the Los Angeles chapter, and Christian Heyne, chief programs and policy officer for the group.
In the letter, the Brady organization said being tough on crime also means investigating “negligent or illegal actions by the gun industry itself.”
More than one in five, or about 22.48% of guns recovered from crimes statewide were traced to a California dealer, the letter said. “The reality is that Turner’s has been linked to thousands of firearms being recovered in disproportionately Black and Brown communities since the California’s Department of Justice began collecting this data,” the Brady letter stated.
“The oversight response to this pattern has been wholly inadequate,” the letter stated.
The group said it stands with Hahn and “implores your office to investigate Turner’s Outdoorsman by using the statutory authority to inspect gun dealers.”
Hahn also wrote a letter to Torrance Mayor George Chen, asking the city to strengthen gun store regulations. The city can use county’s gun-store ordinance passed in 2023 but only for unincorporated areas as a model for Torrance, and other L.A. County cities, she wrote.
County level gun ordinances, which apply to unincorporated areas and not cities, ban the sale of .50 caliber guns and ammo, implement a buffer zone between gun dealers and sensitive areas, ban minors from gun stores and require gun stores to keep fingerprint logs, maintain weekly inventory reports and have security cameras.
Turner’s Outdoorsman corporate officials were asked to comment on the possible investigation but did not return a phone call. Those employees at the Torrance store said they were not allowed to talk to the media. But the store did release a statement shortly after Allen’s arrest.
“We exercise a long-standing policy where we discuss any potential law enforcement related information, if/when that ever occurs, directly with law enforcement authorities only,” Bill Ortiz, Turner’s Outdoorsman senior vice president, said in the statement emailed to the Los Angeles Times.
At a Board of Supervisor’s special budget meeting on May 6, Hochman acknowledged receiving the request from Hahn but seemed to waiver on starting an investigation.
“We would love to do that. We will actively do that,” he told the board.
However, he said that would require hundreds of hours of investigators’ and prosecutors’ time. He said he would have to “pull prosecutors and investigators off current duty; other cases will suffer.”
He indicated he did start a task force to investigate possible hospice care fraud, which also was a request of the board. “The DA will put some teeth into dealing with hospice care fraud,” he told the board.
When asked if the DA is investigating gun sales at Turner’s, the DA released the following statement on Thursday:
“The District Attorney’s Office will actively participate in any investigation against a firearms dealer that violates any local, state or federal law,” the statement said.
“We are confident the Supervisor knows that the ATF (federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) has primary jurisdiction over federally licensed firearm dealers, and we will partner with any federal or state agency to ensure guns are being purchased properly based on California’s strict gun laws. We hope the County’s Board of Supervisors will ensure the District Attorney’s Office and its investigators have the necessary resources needed to conduct these important investigations, especially given the board’s recent efforts over the past year to cut the DA’s budget,” the statement said.
The Brady group said the ATF inspects gun dealers less than once a decade. “No other industry in this country operates under such permissive conditions,” the organization wrote in its letter to Hochman.