At Turner’s Outdoorsman in Torrance, racks of long guns line the back wall beneath taxidermied deer and antelope heads. On Sunday afternoon, shoppers browsed fishing poles and a wide array of camouflage hunting gear.
It could have been a scene straight out of a gun shop in rural Utah or Alabama, but instead it was in an ordinary strip mall on a busy stretch of Hawthorne Boulevard, just steps away from a nail salon and a Cold Stone Creamery ice cream shop.
For those who think of Los Angeles County as a difficult place to get a gun because of state and local regulations, it may come as a surprise that the man charged with attempting to assassinate President Trump has died. reportedly purchased His firearms in LA’s South Bay.
Cole Thomas Allen, who authorities say arrived at a banquet room at the White House correspondents’ dinner Saturday night, legally purchased a 12-gauge shotgun at Turner’s Place in his hometown of Torrance, as well as a semiautomatic pistol at CAP Tactical Firearms in neighboring Lawndale.
The shooting has shocked the city of Torrance, with neighbors and coworkers wondering how a respected tutor with a mechanical engineering degree from Caltech could be accused of such a crime. Alan lived with his parents – both teachers – on a quiet street in a middle-class neighborhood.
Torrance Mayor George K. “Torrance is a community built on respect, diversity, hard work and public safety,” Chen said on X. Our community joins the nation in condemning the violent incident that occurred in Washington, DC.
Before being charged with attempting to assassinate President Trump, Cole Thomas Allen reportedly purchased a gun at CAP Tactical Firearms in Lawndale.
(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)
Southwest LA County – and Torrance in particular – has a well-established reputation as being a relatively gun-friendly area within a more broadly gun-control pro-county and region.
According to The Times, as of November 2023, Torrance was home to 18 firearms dealers. have reported. That’s about one dealer for every 8,150 residents of the South Bay city, which has a population of about 147,000.
Meanwhile, in all of Los Angeles County, there were about 350 licensed gun dealers as of 2023, of which only 38 were in L.A. city, where about 4 million people live, or one for every 100,000 or so residents.
At the local level, laws and practices regulating gun dealers can vary widely from city to city. burbank allowed A temporary moratorium on new gun dealers was imposed in 2022 after concerns arose about the density of stores there following the school shooting that year in Uvalde, Texas. In 2024, Burbank City Council installed “Buffer zones” between gun stores and certain locations, including schools and churches.
Torrance has even taken steps to crack down on gun dealers. In 2022, like The Times reportedJack Brandhorst, owner of a gun shop called Red Rifle Ltd., attempted to obtain a city permit that would allow him to move his shop from nearby Carson to downtown Torrance. The Planning Commission denied the permit after a heated hearing that brought together dozens of pro- and anti-gun-control activists. Brandhorst appealed and the City Council voted 6 to 1 to uphold the denial.
“These city council people silenced the squeaky wheels,” Brandhorst said after the council hearing. “There are no laws or regulations that limit gun stores in that area.”
In May 2023, the council approved a new regulation stating that many establishments, including check-cashing shops, drive-thru restaurants and gun dealers, would no longer be allowed in the city of Torrance, although they are welcome to set up shop in many other areas of the city.
Yet gun dealers are still not an uncommon sight in most shopping centers and commercial districts of the South Bay. In Torrance, those guns are being used in crimes in alarming numbers.
Between 2017 and 2021, Torrance dealers sold the third most crime guns subsequently recovered in Los Angeles than any municipality in the country. The Times reported. Authorities define crime guns As firearms that have been stolen or illegally possessed, have been used in a crime, or are suspected of being used in a crime.
Torrance is behind only larger Las Vegas and Phoenix, according to A report for 2023 By the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Additionally, during the same period, more than 700 of the crime guns recovered in LA were purchased from Torrance gun dealers.
Between January 1, 2010, and December 31, 2022, the Turner’s Outdoorsman location in Torrance sold 1,652 crime guns, according to a 2023 report from the California Department of Justice. CAP Tactical Firearms sold 150 crime guns in that period.
An employee at Turner Outdoorsman’s Torrance location referred questions to Bill Ortiz, the company’s senior vice president.
“We follow a long-standing policy where we discuss any potential law enforcement-related information, if/when it occurs, directly with law enforcement officials,” Ortiz said in an emailed statement Sunday.
CAP Tactical was closed Sunday and Monday and a call requesting comment was not returned Monday afternoon.
Speaking with The Times, Allen’s neighbors and acquaintances in Torrance described him as quiet, smart and unassuming. People who knew some of his teaching students said they described him as intelligent and skilled in mathematics and science.
Allen reportedly wrote a manifesto in which he listed administration officials as assassination targets. The manifesto also references Christianity directly and indirectly, such as saying that “Turning the other cheek when *someone else* is oppressed is not Christian behavior; it is complicity in the crimes of the oppressor.” Trump, for his part, described Allen as “sick” and said Allen “hates Christians” in an interview with Fox News over the weekend.
At Caltech, those who knew Allen have said he was involved in the Caltech Christian Fellowship. He was identified as “large group coordinator” in a 2016 posting on the fellowship’s website.
Times staff writers Ellen Tchekamedian, Richard Vinton and Tony Briscoe contributed to this report.
