New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, right, and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly announce the arrest of 19 people and seizure of 254 guns as part of gun smuggling between the Carolinas and New York, Monday,... (Associated Press) 
 
 A pair of gunrunners smuggled firearms into New York City by hiding them in luggage they carried on discount buses that offered cheap fares and lesser odds of getting caught, authorities said Monday. 
 
 An undercover city police officer posing as a gun broker for criminal customers bought 254 weapons from the men in dozens of transactions since last year _ the largest gun seizures in the city in recent memory. One of the guns was an assault rifle that was disassembled and transported in a girlfriend's zebra-striped bag, authorities said. 
 
 The alleged smugglers, Walter Walker and Earl Campbell, were among 19 people arrested in New York and in North Carolina and South Carolina _ states where the guns originated _ as the result of a 10-month investigation. Also charged was an aspiring rapper from Brooklyn. 
 
 Walker and Campbell were arrested earlier this month by local police in their home states, authorities said. The names of their defense attorneys were not immediately available. 
 
 New York Police Department officials and prosecutors announced details of the case on Monday, citing it as another example of a persistent black market in which firearms from the South can sell for three times their original price in the city. New York has some of the nation's strictest gun-control measures and a mayor who has crusaded for tougher laws in other states. 
 
 "There is no doubt that the seizure of these guns has saved lives," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a news conference. 
 
 Wiretap evidence showed that sellers in the Carolinas knew the weapons were destined for New York, said Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget Brennan. 
 
 "Perhaps the two most disturbing aspects of the gun-trafficking operation were the simplicity of the business model, and the complete indifference of the gun suppliers to the mayhem their actions would cause here in New York City," Brennan said. "The marketing strategy was buy low, sell high and keep a low profile." 
 
 The gun case was a spinoff of a drug investigation in Brooklyn that turned up Instagram photos of handguns and wads of cash posted by the rapper. Wiretap and other evidence led investigators to Walker, 29, of Sanford, N.C. and Campbell, 24, of Rock Hill, S.C., who were smuggling guns separately but using the same middleman in New York City, authorities said. 
 
 The two tapped a loose network of suppliers in their hometowns, authorities said. Some guns were obtained on the black market, while others were bought from gun dealers using straw buyers to get around one-gun-a-month restrictions. 
 
 "The problem is that the gun laws passed now, so it's like now I can only buy a gun from a gun store every 30 days," Campbell complained in one conversation, according to an indictment. "So I had to, like, pay different people to keep buying different guns." 
 
 Before heading to New York, Campbell would get photos of the guns his suppliers were offering and send the images to the undercover officer, authorities said. Both defendants would travel to the city carrying a dozen or more handguns, rifles and shotguns in bags that were stowed in luggage compartments of Chinatown-based carriers also favored by drug couriers, investigators said. 
 
 One of the discount bus companies charges $60 one-way from Raleigh, N.C., to New York. The fare is about half that charged by Greyhound, which, unlike the Chinatown buses, requires identification for boarding. 
 
 Walker met two times last year with the middleman and the undercover officer at the rapper's Brooklyn recording studio to sell the undercover firearms, the indictment said. He also alleged sold weapons to the undercover in April in Manhattan. 
 
 In January, the undercover officer met with Campbell and his girlfriend, who was carrying assault rifle parts in her zebra-striped suitcase, authorities said. The girlfriend struggled to assemble the weapon in the backseat of a car by using a YouTube instructional video she called up on her smartphone, investigators said. When she failed, the undercover bought the pieces anyway for $1,100, they said. ||||| Authorities today announced the biggest gun bust in city history — an NYPD operation that took down two smuggling rings funneling illegal guns from the South for cheap resale on New York’s streets. 
 
 Nineteen thugs were arrested and 254 firearms recovered. 
 
 Those busted included two gun runners who oversaw the pair of loosely organized rings and sold their illicit goods through the same city dealer, officials said. 
 
 One of the men, Walter Walker, used a rap studio at 1991 Atlantic Ave. in the Ocean Hill section of Brooklyn as his home base in the city. The undercover police operation had been dubbed “Up on the Hill.’’ 
 
 Another perp, Earl Campbell, was clearly worried about the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk tactics. 
 
 He was caught on tape asking a supplier “whether he should hold merchandise where he was [in transit] or bring it back to South Carolina,” said NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly. 
 
 “Campbell didn’t want to risk it being found by New York Police and is heard by police saying, ‘Yea, I’m in Charlotte now. I can’t take them to my house, to my side of town in Brownsville. We got, like, whatchama call it, stop and frisk,’ ” Kelly said. 
 
 Kelly also said that last year “detectives learned through an unrelated undercover narcotics investigation that guns were being sold in the Oceanhill community of Brooklyn.” 
 
 Above the Country Kitchen restaurant on Atlantic and Saratoga avenues, within the 81st Precinct, they discovered a 26-year-old aspiring rapper, Mathew Best, who lived on Saratoga Avenue. He also used a unit in the same building as a recording studio. 
 
 “Best posted several photos of guns and cash on Instagram, and in the video he posted on YouTube, he boasted, ‘Packing more guns than the Air Force,’ ” Kelly said. 
 
 Best helped Walker peddle the guns,” authorities said. 
 
 Walker “made trips to New York City practically every week and sometimes multiple times a week just to sell guns,” Kelly said. 
 
 “There is no doubt that the seizure of these guns – the largest bust in the city’s history – has saved lives,’’ Mayor Bloomberg said in a statement. “For that reason, every New Yorker, in every part of our city, owes a debt of thanks to all those involved in this investigation.” 
 
 Sources said the bust was due in part to the NYPD’s “pro-active’’ policies such as its controversial stop-and-frisk. 
 
 Walker of Sanford, NC, and Earl Campbell of Rock Hill, SC, would bring up their haul to New York on their favorite mode of transportation — cheap buses to Chinatown — and transfer them to Brooklyn-based broker Omole Adedji, authorities said. 
 
 The transactions between the men would be swift and extremely profitable, with the guns selling for at least three times their original price, officials said. 
 
 The thugs knew they could get a premium for the weapons given New York’s strict gun laws, authorities said. 
 
 Nearly $160,000 was made on the sale of at least some of the weapons, officials said. 
 
 Some of the sellers urged the thugs to also sell ammo, with one perp referring to the bullets as “cop killers.’’ 
 
 One suspect, a 19-year-old one, was busted with a 19mm SKS semiautomatic in her bag. 
 
 The Manhattan DA’s office and federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are involved in the ongoing investigation. 
 
 The case is being handled primarily by the city’s Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor. ||||| Atlanta (CNN) The breakup of a gun smuggling ring allegedly involving a current and former Delta Air Lines employee has exposed what a New York prosecutor described as an "egregious breach of security" at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. 
 
 Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson said Tuesday that the investigation was "deeply troubling" -- not only for the havoc the gun running unleashed on the streets but because of the vulnerability to acts of terrorism on air travel that it revealed. 
 
 "If they can put guns on the plane this time," he told reporters, "they could have easily put a bomb on one of those planes." 
 
 Two men worked together to smuggle guns and ammunition on at least 20 flights from Atlanta to New York from May to December, officials said. 
 
 "We have an egregious breach of security" at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport because airport employees "are not required to go through screening," said Thompson. 
 
 In total, 153 guns were recovered as part of a complex investigation that Thompson outlined by using charts and surveillance video during a press conference in New York. 
 
 Eugene Harvey, who worked for Delta at the Atlanta airport, was arrested at his home in Atlanta on Monday, authorities said. 
 
 JUST WATCHED Official: Suspect sold over 100 guns Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Official: Suspect sold over 100 guns 04:29 
 
 According to Harvey's arrest warrant affidavit, here's how the operation worked: 
 
 -- Harvey used his security clearance to help provide guns to a passenger named Mark Quentin Henry after Henry cleared security. 
 
 -- Henry, the former employee, allegedly brought the firearms in his carry-on luggage on at least five flights from Atlanta to New York between May 1 and December 10. 
 
 -- During that time frame, Henry supplied 129 handguns and two assault rifles to co-conspirators in New York, the affidavit states. 
 
 -- One of those co-conspirators ended up selling the firearms to an undercover New York police officer. 
 
 "Gun violence is tearing our country apart," Thompson said. "In Brooklyn, far too many people have been victims of gun violence." 
 
 Reese McCranie, spokesperson for the Atlanta airport, said officials have cooperated with the FBI, the Transportation Security Administration and other agencies and was reviewing its security. 
 
 "As part of the TSA- and airport-approved multi-layered security plan, all employees must pass extensive criminal history record checks, security threat assessments, and security training prior to being approved for access to secured areas," he said in a statement. "Additionally, employees are subjected to continuous vetting and random inspections." 
 
 In a statement, the TSA said it took "the potential for insider threats at airports very seriously." 
 
 "TSA administers security threat assessments and airport criminal checks for all airline employees prior to receiving credentials and access privileges," the statement said. "This is a recurring vetting process that involves random checks. TSA continues to closely partner with law enforcement on this investigation and, where possible, will use the findings from the investigation to improve current processes." 
 
 Thompson praised Delta for being cooperative from start to finish of the undercover probe. 
 
 Henry was arrested in New York on December 10 after landing at John F. Kennedy International Airport with 18 handguns in his bag -- seven of which were loaded, the affidavit says. 
 
 "The problem at this airport in Atlanta is that the employees don't have to go through screening," Thompson said. "Henry knew that. Henry would give Harvey the guns outside the airport. Harvey would go through. All he had to to was badge himself in ... and he's in the terminal with the guns." 
 
 Henry told investigators that he had flown from Atlanta to New York with the 18 firearms and associated ammunition in his carry-on bag, FBI task force agent George Taylor wrote in the affidavit. 
 
 So how could a man get more than a dozen guns on a flight in his carry-on backpack? 
 
 "Had the eighteen firearms been inside the Oakley bag when Henry passed through TSA screening, the firearms would have been discovered," Taylor wrote. 
 
 "Accordingly, I reasonably believe the eighteen firearms bypassed security." 
 
 The 'backdoor method' 
 
 Mary Schiavo, a CNN aviation analyst, said the suspects apparently "took advantage of known loopholes" in airport security. Baggage handlers and other airport employees don't have to go through a concourse screening as passengers do, creating a "backdoor method" for airport employees to smuggle materials, she said. 
 
 "That's literally been a loophole since 2002," when the TSA was established, she said. "There was a big issue on cost." 
 
 When she was inspector general of the Transportation Department for six years ending in 1996, Schiavo raised the "same kind of warning" about the screening of airport employees. 
 
 "This is an important wake-up call. I just hope Washington and the airports heed it," she said. 
 
 Schiavo said that "it will take a lot of expense and manpower to close that loophole." 
 
 At the news conference, Thompson held one of the weapons allegedly smuggled by Henry -- an AK-47. 
 
 "This gun can shoot through a car door," he said. "It can shoot through an apartment door. It can shoot through a bullet-proof vest. In November, Mr. Henry brought this gun on a Delta commercial airliner to New York." 
 
 Transfer in men's restroom? 
 
 On the morning of December 10, the affidavit says, baggage handler Harvey used his security clearance to enter Delta's employee parking lot and then the secure area of the airport. 
 
 "Employees entering this area are not subjected to screening by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), neither at the time of entry into the employee parking lot, nor upon entry to the internal secure/restricted area at Hartsfield-Jackson," the affidavit states. 
 
 Surveillance video showed that on the same morning, the passenger Henry cleared security with a black Oakley backpack. He then went to sit down at the airport's Concourse B. 
 
 According to Taylor, that's when Henry started texting Harvey. Moments later, Harvey entered a men's restroom in Concourse B. And Henry followed. 
 
 After one minute, the affidavit says, Henry walked out of the restroom with the backpack. 
 
 The criminal complaint also says on several occasions this year, Harvey used his security clearance to enter the secure Delta employee parking lot -- even though he was supposed to be off or on sick leave. 
 
 And on each of those dates, Henry boarded a flight from Atlanta to New York. 
 
 Delta spokesman Morgan Durrant told CNN the airline is cooperating with authorities. 
 
 "We take seriously any activity that fails to uphold our strict commitment to the safety and security of our customers and employees," he said. 
 
 Thompson said Henry allegedly boarded 20 flights with guns between May and December. 
 
 "We were fortunate that we were able to get all the guns that they tried to put on the streets of Brooklyn," he said.
– The NYPD has made its largest gun bust in recent memory, seizing 254 firearms in a 10-month operation. The guns were smuggled from North and South Carolina into New York City by two gunrunners, who hid the weapons in luggage on discount buses, then purchased by an undercover cop pretending to be a gun broker across a number of transactions, the AP reports. The alleged smugglers, Walter Walker, 29, and Earl Campbell, 24, and 17 others—including Matthew Best, an up-and-coming rapper from Brooklyn—have been arrested. Best's involvement is an interesting one: Authorities stumbled on the gun smuggling operation during a drug investigation, after the rapper posted Instagram photos of handguns and cash. Turns out, Best was helping Walker sell his guns, the New York Post reports. Walker and Campbell bought the guns both on the black market and through gun dealers, and would then stuff a dozen or more into bags and courier them on cheap Chinatown-based bus services, the AP reports. On one occasion, authorities say, Campbell brought along his girlfriend, who carried a deconstructed assault rifle in her zebra-striped suitcase. She then tried to reassemble the gun by looking up a YouTube instructional video on her phone, but couldn't put it back together. The undercover officer bought it for $1,100 anyway.