By Jill Colvin
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
CITY HALL — Undercover agents were able to buy guns like those used in January's Tucson shooting at an Arizona gun show, despite telling sellers that they probably couldn’t pass a background check, new video footage released Monday reveals.
The video was shot as part of a city investigation into the so-called "gun show loophole," which allows buyers to purchase guns at the shows without the usual background check. It is the second such sting orchestrated by Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
In 2009, 40 private investigators who spent four months infiltrating gun shows in Nevada, Ohio and Tennessee found that the majority of sellers at the shows were willing to sell guns to people who admitted they could not pass background checks.
This time around, the city spent $100,000 to send a team of eight to the Crossroads of the West Gun Show in Phoenix, Arizona on Jan. 23, 15 days after the shooting in which Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head.
The mayor has spent the weeks since the shooting urging lawmakers in Washington to strengthen the background check system to prevent guns from ending up in the hands of those with criminal records or histories of drug abuse.
Grainy footage shot by the team showed one man buying a Glock 9mm gun "no questions asked."
"Just need a bill of sale and see your ID," the buyer was casually told.
Bloomberg compared the time it took to buy the weapon to "the time it would take to buy a hamburgers and fries at McDonald’s."
"The sale you saw may be legal…but it really shouldn't be," said Bloomberg after screening footage of the sale.
In a second video shot the same day, one of the undercover agents tried to buy a weapon from a dealer, whose table was lined with hand guns. He told the dealer he was "looking for something that’s concealable, you know what I mean."
"I like the feel of this man…that’s a good one," he said, as he examined the $525 gun.
When he was told he would not have to pass a background check to buy the weapon, the agent was relieved.
"That’s good because I probably couldn’t pass one, you know what I mean," he told the seller before making his purchase and then being directed to a tent for "big clips."
"That sale was blatantly illegal but it happens all the time," Bloomberg said, noting that that statement should have immediately halted a sale.
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly joined Bloomberg is calling on Congress to close the loophole, which he described as so large you "can drive a truck though, and fill that truck with guns."
He also said that residents feel the impact of illegal gun sales everyday.
"Young men pay the price here on the streets with their lives," he said.
The mayor has repeatedly tried to bring home the message that 34 Americans are killed by gun violence every day.
The footage captured by the undercover agents had been turned over to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, officials said.
