Cole Tomas Allen, who authorities say rushed a banquet room at the White House correspondents\u2019 dinner on Saturday night, had legally bought a 12-gauge shotgun at the Turner\u2019s location in his hometown of Torrance, as well as a semiautomatic pistol at CAP Tactical Firearms in neighboring Lawndale.<\/p>\n
The shooting has left the city of Torrance reeling, with neighbors and co-workers voicing astonishment at how a well-regarded tutor with a mechanical engineering degree from Caltech could be accused of such a crime. Allen lived with his parents \u2014 both educators \u2014 on a quiet street in a middle-class neighborhood. <\/p>\n
\u201cTorrance is a community built on respect, diversity, hard work, and public safety,\u201d Torrance Mayor George K. Chen said on X. \u201cOur community joins the nation in condemning the violent incident that occurred in Washington, D.C.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Before being charged with the attempted assassination of President Trump, Cole Tomas Allen reportedly purchased a firearm at CAP Tactical Firearms in Lawndale.<\/p>\n
(Eric Thayer \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
Southwest L.A. County \u2014 and Torrance in particular \u2014 has a well-established reputation as being a relatively gun-friendly area within a more broadly pro-gun-control county and region.<\/p>\n
Torrance was home to 18 firearm dealers as of November 2023, as The Times has reported<\/a>. That\u2019s approximately one dealer for every 8,150 residents of the South Bay city, which has a population of around 147,000 people.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, across the entirety of Los Angeles County, there were about 350 licensed gun dealers as of 2023, of which only 38 were in the city of L.A., home to nearly 4 million people, or one for every 100,000 or so residents.<\/p>\n At the local level, laws and practices regulating gun dealers can vary widely from city to city. Burbank approved<\/a> a temporary moratorium on new gun dealers in 2022 after concerns emerged about the concentration of shops there following that year\u2019s school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. In 2024, the Burbank City Council instituted<\/a> \u201cbuffer zones\u201d between gun stores and certain locations, including schools and churches.<\/p>\n Even Torrance has taken steps to rein in gun dealers. In 2022, as The Times reported<\/a>, Jack Brandhorst, owner of a gun store called Red Rifle Ltd., attempted to obtain a city permit that would allow him to move his store to downtown Torrance from nearby Carson. The Planning Commission denied the permit after a heated hearing that brought out dozens of pro- and anti-gun-control activists. Brandhorst appealed and the City Council voted 6 to 1 to uphold the denial.<\/p>\n \u201cThese City Council people placated to the squeaky wheels,\u201d Brandhorst said after the council hearing. \u201cThere\u2019s no law or rule that limits gun stores in that area.\u201d<\/p>\n In May 2023, the council approved a new regulation stating that a range of establishments, including check-cashing shops, drive-through restaurants and gun dealers, were no longer allowed in Torrance\u2019s quaint downtown, though they remained welcome to set up shop in many other areas of the city.<\/p>\n Yet gun dealers are still not an uncommon sight 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 crimes.<\/p>\n Between 2017 and 2021, Torrance dealers sold the third-most crime guns later recovered in Los Angeles of any municipality in the nation, The Times reported<\/a>. Officials define crime guns<\/a> as firearms that have been stolen or are illegally possessed, have been used in a crime, or are suspected of having been used in a crime.<\/p>\n