Two New York City gun dealers recently received some unexpected visitors: police officers bearing desk appearance tickets and orders to seize the dealers’ inventory of guns and revoke their licenses.

The case was based on evidence collected in May by a team of private investigators commissioned by Mayor Bloomberg.

Their crime, according to City Hall, was a “straw purchase” – selling a gun to someone even though they know it was going to another person. The police department or the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives usually investigate such crimes, but neither was involved in this project. The mayor’s strategy was one of “innovative prosecution,” the city’s criminal justice coordinator, John Feinblatt, said at a City Council hearing last week. The private investigation company that conducted the investigation, the James Mintz Group, also spearheaded a sting operation against 15 gun sellers in southern states.

Now, more than a month after the New York seizures, the guns have been returned, all but one license for the gun stores have been restored, and the gun sellers still haven’t appeared in court. According to the Queens district attorney’s office, the appearance has been delayed to allow prosecutors time to conduct a further investigation. The Brooklyn district attorney’s office declined to comment about the case.

The lawyers defending the gun sellers say their clients have already been convicted in the eyes of Mr. Bloomberg. On announcing the arrests, the mayor released the number of crimes associated with each gun seller between 1994 and 2001. There were 28 crimes associated with DF Brothers Sport Center in Brooklyn, and 44 gun crimes were associated with Woodhaven Rifle and Pistol Range in Queens, including a police officer shot in the face in 1999, according to the mayor’s office.

“That was like telling the city you want to hang these guys,” the lawyer for DF Brothers Sport Center, Joseph Benfante, said.

The raw number of crimes associated to a gun seller is a good indicator of where to look for illegal sales, a staff attorney at the Brady Campaign Against Gun Violence, Brian Siebel, said. Of all the gun dealers in America, 1.2% accounted for 57.4% of the illegal guns recovered in 2000. The worst gun sellers, the 1.2%, have 10 or more illegal guns traced to their store every year, he said.

Neither of the New York gun sellers raided by the mayor’s private investigators fit into this category. The number of crimes associated with the stores is for a 7-year period, putting them in a much larger bracket of 14% of gun sellers that have a handful of guns traced to crimes every year. Even trace data doesn’t always tell the whole story: If a police officer legally buys a gun for off-duty use that is later stolen and used in a crime, the gun still traces back to the store.

“That’s the fallacy of tracing,” the senior vice president and general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, Lawrence Keane, said. “This is the improper conclusion that people like Mayor Bloomberg reach – they associate each trace as a bad sale somehow. That is simply a false premise to their lawsuits.”

Although they haven’t appeared in court, each gun seller has received notices that their gun dealer permits are on probation and that their premises will be reviewed by the Department of Buildings.

The lawyer for Woodhaven Rifle and Pistol Range in Queens, John Chambers, on Friday filed legal papers to restore the gun license to his client, Michael Spallone. The papers call on the police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, to testify on the cause for what he calls a “publicity stunt.”

“In all the years I’ve been doing this, and I’ve dealt with almost every dealer in New York, I’ve not seen anything quite like this,” he said.

The dealers at both gun stores allege that the crux of the case against them is based on an unfair weakness in the system, not a criminal enterprise. The private investigator that set them up in the sting operation is a former Suffolk County police officer with credentials, they said. When the retired officer with a permit asked the gun sellers to manipulate documents, they refused, the lawyers said. But when her companion asked to touch the gun, they relented because she was law enforcement, the lawyers said.

According to federal law, gun sellers must cease a sale if they suspect the purchase is actually for another person.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Bloomberg said his office couldn’t comment on the details of the investigation because the case is still pending.

Both defendants are set to appear in court later this month.