Mayor Launches Another Assault on Out-of-State Gun Dealers

Mayor Bloomberg rang the bell for round 2 of his legal battle against outof-state gun dealers.

Mr. Bloomberg and his legal team, who in May sued 15 small-town gun stores, yesterday filed a lawsuit against 12 more dealers.

The suit, which was filed in Brooklyn federal court against dealers in the same five states as the last lawsuit — Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Virginia — stems from an undercover sting operation conducted by a private investigation firm hired by the city.

The sting used hidden cameras to catch businesses making overt "straw purchases," or illegal scams where people who are clearly the customers bring along companions with clean records to fill out the paperwork.

"All of the dealers named in our lawsuits should know that this has nothing to do with the Second Amendment," Mr. Bloomberg told reporters yesterday in news conference. "This is about law enforcement, plain and simple. And, it's about keeping guns out of the hands of criminals.

"We're not interested in putting these dealers out of business. We invite them to join the settlement we had with the other dealers," he said.

The co-owner of Hot Shots Jewelry & Pawn, Melissa Paulette, said she was "shocked" by the lawsuit, which she first heard about yesterday from a reporter.

She said her Marietta, Ga., store, located five miles from one of the dealers sued in May that has since countersued the city, Adventure Outdoors Inc., goes "above and beyond" to ensure that all of its sales are legal.

Hot Shots, she said, chooses not to sell to anyone under 21, although under state law it can sell to individuals who are 18 and older.

"We run a really tight ship," Ms. Paulette said during a telephone interview. "We didn't do anything wrong."

Since May, six of the 15 dealers targeted in the first suit have settled with the city, agreeing to allow a court-appointed "special master" access to all of the store's records. A partner at the Manhattan law firm Jenner & Block, Andrew Weissmann, who served as director of the federal task force that investigated Enron, has been named as the "master" on three of the cases.

Of the remaining nine dealers that have not settled, six have filed motions of dismissal, including two that filed countersuits in their home states of Georgia and South Carolina.

Mr. Bloomberg — who has traveled around the country pushing for stronger gun laws and in the process raised his national profile — said that even though crime is down in the city by 20% in the past five years, more than 300 people with illegal guns were arrested last year. He announced yesterday that the city would begin advertising in subways to let New Yorkers know that illegally carrying a loaded gun now carries a three-and-a-half-year prison term.

Yesterday's 57-page lawsuit says many of the guns recovered in New York and traced to the 12 dealers were "Saturday night specials," or "cheap, poorly made handguns favored by criminals."

Those fighting the suits say the trace data the city is using is not reliable and that guns often change hands many times after they are sold, making it unfair to single out individual dealers.

A lawyer for six of the dealers in the first case who have filed motions of dismissal, John Renzulli, said the first lawsuit was "anything but successful," and noted that those who settled did so because they did not have the resources to counter the political and monetary heft that New York City was putting behind the case.

A South Carolina dealer, Larry Mickalis, who was sued in May and filed a suit against the city in return, said his legal fees have already come to $50,000, or a year's profits.

Mr. Bloomberg said: "We're sending a message loud and clear: We're determined to see that gun dealers who break the law are held accountable."