Free Republic

Mayor Bloomberg’s high-profile campaign to keep illegal guns out of the city is drawing return fire. Earlier this year, he dispatched teams of private eyes to collect evidence against what he called “the worst of the worst” of small-time gun dealers in states like Georgia, South Carolina, and Ohio. In the process, he has set off a turf war with the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, which normally handles the interstate gun beat. And some criminal charges Bloomberg initiated against New York gun dealers are mired in the courts. Joe Green, a senior special agent and the...

More than three months after Mayor Bloomberg's announcement that he had sent private investigators into five states to catch gun dealers making illegal sales, he is refusing to turn over the evidence they've gathered to the federal agency that investigates illegal guns. Analysts said the impasse may have slowed the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms in its investigation of and possible action against gun dealers that broke the law. The city won't turn over the evidence, which includes videotapes of gun dealers allowing so-called straw purchases of guns, until the ATF signs an evidence-sharing agreement that would prohibit...

To: National Desk Contact: Lawrence G. Keane of National Shooting Sports Foundation, 203-426-1320 NEWTOWN, CT, Aug. 28 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the trade association for the firearms industry, said today that the failure of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to turn over evidence of alleged illegal firearm sales to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is telling. "If these firearms dealers violated federal law there needs to be a full investigation," said Lawrence G. Keane, senior vice president and general counsel of NSSF. "The fact that Mr. Bloomberg is so...