The Trace Takes Aim (Again) at California Sporting Goods Chain

For several years now, the gun control lobby has been going after gun dealers with the largest number of traces connected to their sales. With help from gun control groups, USA Today ran a big series on dealers in the ATF’s now-shuttered Demand 2 program, which imposed additional oversight on FFLs that had 25 or more gun traces with a time-to-trace of three years or less in a calendar year. Though the ATF declared that the time-to-trace was not, in itself, evidence of any wrongdoing on the part of the gun dealer, gun control groups ignored that admonition and portrayed those dealers as “bad apples” who were knowingly arming criminals. 

In California, several Turner Outdoors locations were included in the Demand 2 program, and the Everytown-associated website The Trace has run multiple stories insinuating there must be something nefarious taking place. The site’s latest piece specifically focuses on the chain’s Bakersfield location, and once again suggests that the store is doing something wrong without offering any real evidence. 

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. That was the highest number for a store with an active firearms dealer license in any of the state’s 10 most populous cities.

83 traces out of 16,000 sales does not seem like a particularly high number to me, and the Bakersfield police even told The Trace it is “unaware of there being any illegal firearms sales or transactions that are occurring.”

But while The Trace reported that comment, it also gave plenty of space for anti-gunners to argue that the chain should be investigated. 

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 added 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. 

“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 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 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.

According to The Trace, almost 22 percent of all guns sold in California from 2023 to 2025 came from a Turner’s location. Almost 26 percent of guns that were traced in California during that time period came from a Turner’s as well. In raw numbers, we’re talking about roughly 8,500 traces and about 540,000 total sales. That is not a wildly disproportionate number, given that not all guns used in crimes are traced and not all guns that are traced are used in crimes. 

It’s certainly no reason to demand an investigation, but this is how the gun control lobby operates. Turner’s is the largest firearm retailer in California, so it’s an appealing target for the anti-gunners. If the facts don’t support their narrative, they’ll just ignore the data in favor of anecdotes and supposition until they get their way. That might not work in every state, but in deep-blue California it’s a pretty sound strategy, unfortunately. 

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