More PA Gun Shops Sued by NYC Mayor Bloomberg

[josh]

Originally Posted by DeltaII5

I was just about to post that. The "Sting" wasn't really a sting. A male and a female were used, and assumed to be married. It's a crappy sting to say the less. There was a post of one online with one of the videos from the sting. To say the least it was pathetic. The woman would walk around the store, the man look at the gun. THen the woman would fill out the paper work

It is especialy crappy because PA law allows a husband and wife to share weapons. There are also acceptions to transferring handguns. Between spouses and close relatives no paperwork or background check is necessary.

However at the last meeting of dealers,PSP,PICS and the ATF held here in clarion the PSP stated they would arrest spouses for carrying each others guns no matter the legality of it.

[DeltaII5]

From what I remember, most of these suits were settled. I think 80% of the dealers agreed to be monitored.

I asked this question over at AK47.net but no one had an answer:

Can a 3rd party monitor gun sales? I mean there must be some type of privacy concern here and I can't assume even the ATF would allow a 3rd party to monitor sales. 3rd party monitoring just makes me wonder where those records would end up.

[CCinPA]

I would like to see one of these "sting" videos. If anyone has a link can you please direct me to it?

[DeltaII5]

I'm having a hell of a time finding it. It was on AK47.net but its archived now if not deleted and I'm not a premium member there is I can't search the archive.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ide.../27/the_sting/

That site has a picture on it. In the backround shows a video, thats they one they had posted. Apparantly Bloomberg still is refusing to release the videos to the ATF because it turns out he jepordized almsot 20 on going investigations by the ATF.

[CCinPA]

Delta,
Sorry to put you through all that but I do appreciate the link to the news story.
Thanks

[Glock22xd9]

From what I have learned in school you have to have a warrant to record anyone's voice in any kind of wire tap. Considerind the possibility for federalas well as New York and Pennsylvania having jurisdiction, it's hard to say where the warrant would've been issued, but there had to be one. The mayor wouldn't commense an investigation without one. That would be a great way out for all of these poor shop owners though. If the owner KNOWINGLY sold these guns to someone for someone else, that's a lil' different, but this sounds like a very very grey area.

[CCinPA]

Originally Posted by Glock22xd9

From what I have learned in school you have to have a warrant to record anyone's voice in any kind of wire tap. Considerind the possibility for federalas well as New York and Pennsylvania having jurisdiction, it's hard to say where the warrant would've been issued, but there had to be one. The mayor wouldn't commense an investigation without one. That would be a great way out for all of these poor shop owners though. If the owner KNOWINGLY sold these guns to someone for someone else, that's a lil' different, but this sounds like a very very grey area.

Hmm, good point! Not far from where I live was/is an old an well known photography studio who did a very great deal of photography for most of the kids in the Wyoming Area School Distrist like senior photos and soforth. Well the father/founder of the photoshop started to sit back some and let his son take over the shop and it turns out the son had placed a video camera in the changing room.
Well a female highschool girl happened to notice a red LED or light while in the changing room and that led to an investigation. Bottom line is the son was recording people undressing and how they charged him was on federal wire tapping and the only reason they could get that charge on him was because the mic was active while recording and some minimal audio was captured on the tape.
This happened more than a decade ago and I know laws have changed since, but you bring up a very good point that very well may be valid.

[FRISteve]

Let's carry it a step farther - the article said that PIs did the straw purchases. PIs can NOT break the law - so how about arresting them, while we're at it.

[Glock22xd9]

Originally Posted by FRISteve

Let's carry it a step farther - the article said that PIs did the straw purchases. PIs can NOT break the law - so how about arresting them, while we're at it.

I tried to research this to come up with proof of my suspicion, to no avail. My theory is that a P.I. gets his license and has most of the authority a cop has. More authority than someone qualified with act 235 (allows security guards to carry weapons on the job.) The P.I. therefore can commit crimes on the job just as an undercover cop can without consequences.

[DeltaII5]

If you google "bloomberg gun sting" or anything like that you'll come up with a whole load of stories.

There's quite a few sites that states bloomberg is look at criminal and civil prosecution for what he did. PIs cannot falsify information for buying firearms. No one can do this.

It looks like 15 or so gun shops settled. But 2 gun shops have filed suites against him from what I can see. It breaks down to money. Suing NYC isn't exactly the easiest thing you can do no matter how good your case it. NY has the highest tax rate in the country and they'll be happy to use that to fight 2A.

As far as wiretapping.... I have no idea how that would work. I don't think that face to face conversations are considered such. I could be wrong.

But, someone did point out, that by falsifying federal fire arms records and doing such with interstate commerce Bloomberg in effect violated the RICO statues. If you read the OC statues its actually quite funny, because he did break them. Hopefully this shit bites him in the ass, but just like cops who shoot innonence people, or any gov't misconduct; nothing is going to happen.