Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Friday he thinks Congress should join him at the funeral of Peter Figoski, the NYPD officer shot and killed earlier this week while interrupting a burglary in Brooklyn.
"If you could get Congress to come with me and sit with me in this church on Monday?" the mayor said during a radio show, according to The New York Post. "Wouldn't that be wonderful if they finally got some understanding, and in memory of this officer, said we can't bring him back but we're going to make sure his kids and his parents are protected by getting guns off the streets out of illegal hands."
Bloomberg has long blamed Washington for gun violence in New York, saying federal firearms laws are too lax.
Just earlier this week, hizzoner revealed he'd organized a sting operation in which investigators called up 125 private online gun sellers located in 14 states, and found that 62 percent of them were willing to commit a felony by selling guns to investigators who freely admitted they could not pass a background check:
According to The New York Times, city officials said investigators bought 10 firearms in face-to-face transactions that began after a seller was located online, adding that they could have purchased many more if the inquiry had continued. Coincidentally, one of the guns purchased by investigators, a Ruger semiautomatic, was the same model used to kill Officer Figoski on Monday.
Figoski, who leaves behind four daughters, will be buried at a ceremony Monday.
The shooting suspect, Lamont Pride, was arraigned Tuesday on a first-degree murder charge for Figoski's killing. Four other men accused of being involved were arraigned on second-degree murder charges. All of them were jailed without bail.