Some shops have firearms dealer licenses but only repair guns. Gun businesses, like localities, are not all the same. “There needs to be some sort of cooperation across jurisdictions,” Johnson said. Monterey Park - at about eight square miles - accounts for just one tiny piece of the puzzle.

County would require more than 160 cities across Los Angeles, its four neighboring counties and their nearly 35,000 square miles to combine efforts to dramatically reduce the number of gun retailers in the region. The findings suggest that achieving a meaningful reduction in homicides in L.A. “The average effect is actually quite small,” said David Johnson, associate professor of economics at the University of Central Missouri. Only large-scale changes in the number of firearms dealers across multiple neighboring counties had a meaningful impact on local gun homicides, the researchers found. There’s little evidence that barring retailers from certain neighborhoods or requiring them to install video cameras, for example, can significantly drive down gun violence. Researchers have begun to explore the influence of firearms dealers on nearby violence, and their findings are complicated. In Monterey Park, the shooter killed his victims with a semiautomatic handgun that is banned in California today but was legal when he purchased it more than two decades ago. Others, including Torrance, have restricted where dealers can open.Įven so, some of the boldest changes have limited effect and are going largely unnoticed, The Times has found in a months-long exploration of gun access in America that incorporated more than 100 interviews and volumes of public records. Some municipalities, including Burbank, have instituted temporary moratoriums on new gun dealers to allow officials time to deliberate over more permanent solutions.

Just Wednesday, a gunman opened fire at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, killing three people. Meanwhile, daily gun violence and mass shootings continue. “Either it was a slow night or people just didn’t oppose it.”Ĭities across Los Angeles County are considering - and in many cases approving - sweeping changes to how and where they allow firearms dealers to operate. “We didn’t really have any public comment,” Mayor Jose Sanchez said, adding that he received only “one or two emails” after the August vote.

This series explores the complex relationship between firearm access and gun crime. The Los Angeles Times set out to determine whether easy availability is a key driver of gun violence - but it’s not that simple. Most Americans live within 10 minutes of a gun store.

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