Alphecca

Mayor Blowhard & Co Stall ATF

Not content to (probably) breaking the law by conducting their own "straw purchases", now NYC is failing to help the ATF in their own investigations of the gun dealers in question. From today's New York Sun:

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 the agency from "publicly disclosing evidence without notice and consent from the city," the mayor's criminal justice coordinator, John Feinblatt, said.

The inability of the two sides to come to an agreement is due in part to what the ATF perceived as the mayor's infringement on its jurisdiction, analysts and law enforcement sources said.

[...]

Because the investigators are private citizens, they would have broken the law if they actually made straw purchases or intentionally filled in incorrect information on the gun licensing forms. Also, some states have stringent rules about hidden video equipment. Law enforcement sources said it is unlikely the investigators would be prosecuted, but that the ATF was sending City Hall a message to stay off its turf.

[...]

"Why would they have to sign some kind of agreement with the mayor of a locality?" a Second Amendment lawyer in Virginia, Steven Halbrook, said. "The feds don't have to sign an agreement if there's evidence of criminality. ... It demonstrates that Mayor Bloomberg lacks sincerity in this so-called crusade, because if he believes crimes have been committed, he would want them to take federal enforcement action."

Or maybe he realizes now that his lawyers broke the law themselves!