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MONDAY, AUGUST 31-SEPTEMBER 06, 2026
In California’s biggest cities, Turner’s Outdoorsman is a top source of crime guns
UCLA research: Statewide student homelessness rises 10% since 2019
By Aaron Mendelson for The Trace
By Joe Taglieri
This story was originally published by The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence in America, in partnership with CalMatters, LAist and KVPR.
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urner’s Outdoorsman on Mohawk Street in Bakersfield 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. The Trace reported in May that the Turner’s Outdoorsman chain, which has over 30 locations across California, accounted for a disproportionate share of crime guns recovered in the state. The state Department of Justice 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 gun recoveries in Bakersfield. Altogether, that means 183 firearms sold at that location were later recovered by law enforcement as crime guns in the same city during this
joet@civicnewsgroup.com
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Handguns on display at a gun shop in California on July 12, 2022. | Photo courtesy of Larry Valenzuela/CalMatters/CatchLight Local
three-year window. That number is higher than the combined total of the top five 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 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. 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 the 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 See Crime guns Page 05
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
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tudents in California experiencing homelessness increased 10% since the 2018-19 school year to a record 298,254 in 2024-25, UCLA researchers reported Wednesday. Southern California is home to seven of the 10 school districts with the highest numbers of students experiencing homelessness, according to a report titled “State of Crisis 2026: A Deepening Crisis of Students Experiencing Homelessness Across California” by researchers from the UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools. The report analyzed data from the California Department of Education for the 2017-18 through 2024-25 school years. Researchers looked at homeless student enrollment along with suspension, chronic absenteeism, academic achievement, graduation and college-going data. Black and American Indian/Alaska Native students consistently had the highest and fastest-growing rates of homelessness, according to the report. In 2024-25, about 1 in 12 Black students and American Indian/Alaska Native students in the state experienced homelessness. Researchers noted that racial disparities in student homelessness have persisted and widened over time. Of the 10 school districts with the highest number of homeless students, seven were in Southern California. Northern California and the Central Coast accounted for the majority of the 10 counties that posted the highest rates of unhoused students.
Central Coast elementary school districts also accounted for have of the 10 districts with the highest rates of students experiencing homelessness, according to researchers. Students experiencing homelessness continued to trail their housed peers in all educational outcomes that the report analyzed, including chronic absenteeism, suspension rates, academic proficiency, graduation and rates of college-enrollment. “These numbers are particularly concerning given the extensive evidence documenting the harmful effects of housing instability on children’s development, health and educational outcomes,” Grace Kim, a research analyst at the UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools and lead author of the report, said in a statement. “The report makes clear that student homelessness is not only a housing issue, but a complex educational and developmental crisis requiring sustained, coordinated public action.” Researchers pointed out that California’s 2026-27 budget has a one-time $116 million budget allocation aimed at identifying K-12 students experiencing homelessness and supporting their success in school. “This new funding is the largest dedicated state funding to prioritize housing-insecure youth in the country,” Joseph Bishop, executive director of the Center for the Transformation of Schools and an author of the report, said in a statement. “We look forward to working with our state’s policymakers and
See Student homelessness Page 23