"If we don't prosecute [him] to the fullest extent of the law, I don't know who on Earth we would," Bloomberg said. "It makes a sham, a mockery of the law. And it's pretty hard to argue the guy didn't have a gun and that it wasn't loaded. You've got bullet holes in and out to show that it was there."

Burress' attorney, Benjamin Brafman, asked people not to prejudge the case.

"I think the mayor can at times influence pending legal proceedings," he said. "I am just asking the mayor and everyone else to take a deep breath ... [and not prejudge]."

Bloomberg has made his war on illegal guns a signature issue. He also had harsh words for the hospital where Burress was treated, New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. He said hospital management should be charged for failing to report the incident, and that the hospital workers involved should be fired.

"It is just an outrage that the hospital didn't do what they are legally required to do," he said. "It's a lame excuse that they didn't know - this is a world-class hospital in a city where we all know what goes on in the streets of our city, and we all should be working together to get guns off the streets."

Police didn't learn what had happened until they saw it on the television news Saturday afternoon, several hours after the shooting occurred at a Manhattan nightclub, Bloomberg and police officials said. The mayor also blamed Giants management for failing to notify authorities.

"The Giants should have picked up the phone right away, as good corporate citizens," he said.

Pat Hanlon, a spokesman for the Giants, disputed this. "In the early hours of Saturday morning, as we started to get a sense of what we were dealing with, we did, in fact, notify NFL security, which then contacted the police," Hanlon said in an e-mailed statement.