Turner’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…