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L.A.’s Arms Race of the Affluent

From Beverly Hills to Santa Monica, the crime-panicked wealthy are banishing bling and buying guns

By Steve Appleford -December 29, 2021

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https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/l-a-s-arms-race-of-the-affluent/



In Beverly Hills, even the purchase of a firearm comes with certain…expectations. The city’s only gun store, Beverly Hills Guns, is a “concierge service” by appointment only, for a largely affluent clientele. And business is booming.

Since opening in July 2020, the store has seen upscale residents from Santa Monica to the Hollywood Hills increasingly in a panic following several high-profile smash-and-grab and violent home invasion robberies. The apparent siege has brought in a daily stream of anxious business owners and prominent actors, real estate moguls and film execs, says owner Russell Stuart. Most are arming themselves for the first time.

“This morning I sold six shotguns in about an hour to people that say, ‘I want a home defense shotgun,’” says Stuart, whose store is discreetly located in a Beverly Hills office building, with no sign on the doors, down the hall from a diamond dealer. “Everyone has a general sense of constant fear, which is very sad. We’re used to this being like Mayberry.”

That fear has the wealthiest of local gentry contemplating every more elaborate security measures: armored luxury cars, safe rooms and bullet-proof glass in their homes. One client asked about creating the “Tony Stark-level” security of a half-dozen automated drones to hover over his house, says Stuart, whose gun store is part of his larger security company, Force Protective Agency. “If you want the Gucci package, it’s going to cost money.”

The security business is experiencing a rebound after a couple of diminished years because of the pandemic. Some firms had their on-site security guards sent home for health and social distancing reasons. Not anymore. In Beverly Hills, the craving for additional security dates to the riot that followed an otherwise peaceful Black Lives Matter protest in May 2020, with unprecedented looting along Rodeo Drive that left broken boutique windows beneath beloved luxury brands: Chanel, Dior, Gucci, Michael Kors, MCM, Ermenegildo Zegna. Last March, a $500,000 Richard Mille watch was stolen at gunpoint from a diner at the Il Pastaio restaurant. The Dec. 1 home-invasion robbery and shooting death of philanthropist Jacqueline Avant, 81, in her Trousdale Estates home, only accelerated the arms race among the affluent.

“Beverly Hills is definitely a target,” says security expert David Perez, CEO of Omega International Group and a former Marine who previously worked security in the Clinton White House and at the Pentagon. “We’re telling clients, ‘Hey, don’t go out with flashy jewelry. Try to keep a lower profile. Instead of driving the Bentley, maybe just take the SUV. “

Or hit the streets in a luxo ride retrofitted with countermeasures like electrified door handles, run-flat tires and armor plating that can withstand military ordnance—say, the $650,000 Mercedes-Benz S680 Guard, which can repel assault rifle rounds and the detonation of hand grenades, or the $1 million tanklike SUV from Latvia’s Dartz Motorz Co.

With more than 2,000 cameras already deployed throughout the city, Beverly Hills has also hired two private security firms to patrol neighborhoods alongside police. “Whatever the police have needed, fortunately we’re a city that we can write a check and get it,” says Todd Johnson, president and CEO at the Beverly Hills Chamber of Commerce. The city and its population are fully aware that they’ve become an inviting target.

“If you’re going to steal a $400,000 watch, are you going down to San Pedro or are you going to go to Beverly Hills?” While supplementing police with private security can have an impact in smaller cities like Beverly Hills, it’s less practical in Los Angeles, which “has way too few police officers,” says Alan Nissel, an assistant professor of law at Pepperdine University and the principal at the Wilshire Skyline property management and development firm. “Many of our residents are petrified,” he says of the company’s high-end apartment buildings and short-term residences, which stretch from Hollywood to Beverly Hills and Malibu. A manager at one of his Santa Monica buildings was recently held up at knifepoint. “Every single building that we manage has had private security services provided because of upticks, and we’ve never used private security firms in the past.”

On Nissel’s street in West L.A., a number of WhatsApp neighborhood watch groups have agreed to collaborate in the event of civil unrest. “They designate people to block the streets with private cars and surveil the streets,” Nissel says. Some of his most progressive colleagues are arming themselves, including many who “never held a weapon, never considered holding a weapon, but now feel like it would be irresponsible not to.”

Major celebrities at peak fame who require full protection can spend more than $1 million a year on security, say multiple experts, including one-on-one by oversized security muscle, a tactic that Perez dismisses as an “amateur mentality.” Being physically fit is a given for his personnel, but only one of several requirements that also include skill and improvisation. (Think Kevin Costner in The Bodyguard, not the bouncer at your local nightclub.) “It’s not just, ‘I’m a big guy and I can push my way out of here,’” Perez explains. “You have an entry plan and exit plan, because things aren’t always as smooth as you think.”

At Beverly Hills Guns, Stuart instructs his clients on the law and encourages them to visit shooting ranges in L.A. County to better understand their weapons. Customers also ask for help in securing a concealed carry permit from the County Sheriff’s Department. The simplest security option for many will always be a $350 shotgun, as available to the average citizen as to the very rich, but “I don’t want everyone out there just panic-buying,” says Stuart, who proposes establishing a shooting range in Beverly Hills.

Regardless, he knows many new gun owners will fail to get any training at all. “We’re going to have a lot of guns out there in a lot of untrained people’s hands.”

If they want to be safe, maybe they should approach the cartels for security instead.....

Doesn't surprise me a bit, as I have known and shot with a fair number of "liberal" men and women in "the Business," when I lived in L.A. That was at the Beverly Hills Gun Club. Also used to see Spielberg and one of his sons out shooting trap and skeet at a local L.A. range when I was shooting competition.

Liberals in "the Business" are nothing if not hypocrites.

L.W.

People who don't like guns or know how to use them....................priceless.

Maybe they should have recalled Newscum....................

They are reaping what they have sown, & so very justly so..................may they continue to enjoy their liberal paradise that is CA.

MM

Screw all of those people, they've been voting for Democraps their whole lives. Now they can reap what they have sown and I hope it hurts.

This is good for us and for the 2A. The wall against the 2A is being demolished, brick by brick.

You are so far off base you are standing on a soccer field.


People like us are less than...
We can't be trusted with guns, we are the threat.

They are the only ones who can be trusted.

To them, their needing to be armed, is proof of the need for gun control.

Yeah Right that's the ticket,,,get the fox to guard the chickens

I was at a good sized open motorcycle rally, we saw a guy pay to park his nice Harley in the members only area of a 1%er club that was guarded 24 hours a day..

His bike disappeared.

Hey, libtards- - - - -"You'll shoot your eye out'!- - - - -or more likely, one of your family's!

I know what you need to do- - - - -hire Alec Baldwin as a shooting coach. He took out two people with one bullet- - - -one DOA, and another one wounded!

Guess a lot of people will profit from this , security companies . Shrinks for the shooters , criminals , and neighborhood OMG’s . Lawyers for the same , insurance companies , hospitals , politically somehow I would guarantee.
But not a red cent of thought about how we got to OMG !
Kenneth

Yep. They won't think twice about continuing to support gun control. Because they know any new gun control measures won't be enforced against them.

Same reason the dipshits are pushing alternative energy and electric cars. If a kilowatt hour of energy quadrupled in price overnight, it wouldn't affect their lives in the slightest.

Ohhhhh, the seeds we have sown.......

Bless their hearts. Fear is a powerful emotion....

My niece just got herself a 43x for a Christmas present to herself. I just sent her a couple Shield Arms 15 rd mags and an UpLula loader.

She's a bank manager and knows how to deal with entitled pricks. Maybe she can pick up some extra cake doing distance learning to some of these rich LA schloms.

They would be sweet if Hollywood experienced a Viking raid.

A lot of people think gun control is about getting rid of guns. Well, it is, but only your guns. Rich elites will always be allowed to have theirs in any society I can imagine.

" Yep. They won't think twice about continuing to support gun control. Because they know any new gun control measures won't be enforced against them.".........It's just the NY city model all over again...... No guns allowed; except for those with a "waiver", which is issued based upon a myriad of factors such as; net worth, political affiliation, social standing, and history of political donations. The second amendment will be alive and well - As long as you are approved for your "waiver".

Beverly Hills has a significant conservative population. All of my neighbors are conservative and own firearms. Our Trump rallies were awesome and overtook several blocks each weekend.

Funny that the liberal agenda of 2019-2020 has caused more liberals to exercise their second amendment rights than any other time since the frontier was settled..
It is almost as if someone goaded them into it..

I do not live in California nor have any reason to go there ever again.

I did hear that during the riots, people flocked to guns stores only to be told there's a 10 day wait for handgun purchase (Not sure if that's still true or in effect??)

A common response was along the lines of "That's not for ME, that's for the bad guys".

Oftentimes people vote on a law or amendment without reading it - Like Obama Care - "We have to pass it to see what's in it" - Pelosi