BOSTON (AP) - Republican U.S. Senate candidate Michael Sullivan - a critic of a bill to expand federal firearms background checks - has performed legal work for a Springfield gun maker and a Connecticut-based firearms trade association.
Sullivan works as a partner at the Ashcroft Law Firm and lists Smith & Wesson and the National Shooting Sports Foundation among clients who have paid him or the firm more than $5,000 for his legal services.
A spokeswoman for Sullivan said that work didn't include lobbying.
The four other Democratic and Republican candidates have expressed support for the bill.
Sullivan, a former acting director of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, has portrayed the Senate bill as a feel-good measure which would do little to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill.