Cole Tomas Allen bought the weapons in LA’s South Bay, a hot spot for gun sales

At Turner’s Outdoorsman in Torrance, long guns are lined up on the back wall under deer and elk heads. On Sunday afternoon, shoppers perused the fishing poles and sorted through a variety of camouflaged hunting gear.

It could have been a scene straight out of a gun shop in rural Utah or Alabama, but instead we were in a strip mall on busy Hawthorne Boulevard, steps away from a nail salon and an ice cream shop at Cold Stone Creamery.

For those who see Los Angeles County as a difficult place to obtain a gun, due to state and local laws, it may come as a surprise that this man has been charged with attempting to assassinate President Trump. it is said to have been purchased his guns in LA’s South Bay.

Cole Tomas Allen, who authorities say stormed the dining room at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner Saturday night, had legally purchased a 12-gauge shotgun from Turner’s in his hometown of Torrance, as well as an automatic from CAP Tactical Firearms in neighboring Lawndale.

The shooting left the city of Torrance reeling, with neighbors and co-workers expressing astonishment at how a respected Caltech mechanical engineering professor could be accused of such a crime. Allen lived with his parents – both teachers – on a quiet street in the middle of nowhere.

“Torrance is a community built on respect, diversity, hard work, and public safety,” Torrance Mayor George K. Chen told X. “Our community joins the nation in condemning the violent incident that took place in Washington, DC”

Southwest LA County – and Torrance in particular – has a well-established reputation as the most gun-friendly area within the state and the most pro-gun region.

Torrance was home to 18 gun dealers as of November 2023, according to The Times he has reported. That’s about one merchant 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, only 38 of which were in the city of LA, which is home to nearly 4 million people, or one for every 100,000 or so residents.

At the local level, laws and procedures governing gun dealers can vary greatly from city to city. Burbank approved a temporary moratorium on new gun dealers in 2022 after concerns were raised about overcrowding in the wake of that year’s school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. 2024, Burbank City Council it is suspended “safe zones” between gun stores and certain places, including schools and churches.

Even Torrance has taken steps to control gun dealers. In 2022, as The Times reportedJack Brandhorst, owner of a gun shop called Red Rifle Ltd., tried to get a city permit that would allow him to move his shop to downtown Torrance from nearby Carson. The Planning Commission denied the permit after a heated hearing that brought out dozens of anti-gun control activists. Brandhorst appealed the appeal and the City Council voted 6 to 1 to uphold the denial.

“These City Council people are stuck on squeaky wheels,” Brandhorst said after the council hearing. “There is no law or order against gun shops in that area.”

In May 2023, the council approved a new ordinance that says many establishments, including check stores, drive-thru restaurants and gun dealers, are no longer allowed in the small city of Torrance, although they are still welcome to set up shop in many other areas of the city.

Yet gun dealers are not uncommon in shopping centers and commercial districts in much of the South Bay. In Torrance, an alarming number of those guns end up being used in crime.

Between 2017 and 2021, Torrance dealers sold the third most crime-related firearms later found in Los Angeles of any municipality in the country, The Times reported. Officers describe crime guns such as stolen or illegally possessed firearms, used in a crime, or suspected of having been used in a crime.

Torrance ranks behind only major cities Las Vegas and Phoenix, according to 2023 report by the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Also, during the same period, more than 700 crime guns found in LA were purchased from Torrance gun dealers.

Between Jan. 1, 2010, and Dec. 31, 2022, the Turner’s Outdoorsman location in Torrance sold 1,652 crime guns, according to a 2023 report by the California Department of Justice. CAP Tactical guns sold 150 crime guns during that time.

An employee at the Torrance location of Turner’s Outdoorsman referred questions to Bill Ortiz, the company’s senior vice president.

“We have a longstanding policy of discussing any information related to law enforcement, if/when that occurs, only directly with the authorities,” Ortiz said in an emailed statement Sunday.

CAP Tactical was closed on Sunday and Monday and a call requesting comment went unanswered on Monday afternoon.

In interviews with The Times, Allen’s neighbors and Torrance acquaintances described him as quiet, intelligent and unassuming. People who know some of his students who taught him described him as a smart person who is good at mathematics and science.

Allen allegedly wrote a manifesto in which he listed administration officials as victims of assassination. The manifesto also made explicit and indirect references to Christianity, such as “Turning the other cheek when *someone* 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 said he was involved in the Caltech Christian Fellowship. A 2016 posting on the relationship’s website appeared to identify him as a “senior team coordinator.”

Times staff writers Alene Tchekmedyian, Richard Winton and Tony Briscoe contributed to this report.