Law enforcement authorities said they halted two loosely organized gun-smuggling operations and confiscated more than 250 firearms. The New York Police Department said it was the largest such seizure in the agency's history, reports the Wall Street Journal. The operation involved a single undercover officer who bought 254 guns in 45 separate transactions. The weapons were transported from two southern states through means including low-cost buses to Manhattan's Chinatown, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. The investigation, which began last summer, grew out of a undercover narcotics operation in Brooklyn.