Hunters and shooters want "rational gun policy that includes support of public lands, gun safety, mandatory training," says John Rosenthal, who is taking on the NRA with his moderate gun organization. (Globe Photo / Mark Ostow)
By Michael Blanding | February 5, 2006
On most weekday mornings, John Rosenthal can be found poring over real estate plans in his Newton office, or meeting with downtown power brokers to try to win support for his pet project: an 850,000-square-foot residential and retail building in Kenmore Square. Today, however, he is on the North Shore, his cheek tucked against the stock of a 12-gauge shotgun. "Pull it!" he yells, and a bright orange disk sails through the air. Rosenthal squeezes the trigger, and a loud crack echoes off the surrounding woods as the target shatters. "There aren't a lot of things more fun than that!" says the 48-year-old Gloucester resident as he lowers the muzzle with a satisfied grin.
Rosenthal is known as many things - but a gun enthusiast isn't one of them. His biggest claim to fame, in fact, may be the 252-foot-long billboard he owns along the Mass Pike in Boston that has for years featured the faces of children killed by gun violence. Its current incarnation reads "Welcome To Massachusetts: You're More Likely To Live Here" - a reference to the state's rate of handgun fatalities, the lowest in the nation. As president of Stop Handgun Violence since cofounding the nonprofit advocacy group with Michael Kennedy in 1995, Rosenthal has campaigned for state and federal laws that require background checks and regulate gun storage.
So what's he doing at the Ipswich Fish & Game Association on this chilly morning with a shotgun in hand? He sits down at a waterlogged picnic table to lay out his new vision: an organization for moderate gun owners called the American Hunters and Shooters Association. "Hunters and shooters aren't part of the problem, they are part of the solution," he says. "They are the one thing missing in the whole debate." The group bills itself as going head-to-head with the National Rifle Association for the hearts and minds - and votes - of gun owners. "The majority of gun owners don't feel like the NRA speaks for them," he says. "We want rational gun policy that includes support of public lands, gun safety, mandatory training."
Rosenthal himself was a gun owner long before he was a gun crusader. In his 20s, he built a house in Waitsfield, Vermont, where a friend introduced him to shooting clay targets, which he added to a list of outdoor pursuits that included kayaking, skiing, and sailing. "It's a Zen sport," he says. "If you aim, you miss."
Asked in 1998 to join the board of the Brady Center for Handgun Violence, the country's most prominent gun control organization, Rosenthal accepted. But he says he was frustrated by what he considers to be the center's extreme views - such as its support for a Washington, D.C., law that criminalized gun possession in that city. "They really want to ban all guns," says Rosenthal, who left the board in 2004.
Through his association with the Brady Center, he met Ray Schoenke, a former Washington Redskins football player and onetime candidate for Maryland governor who owns a 300-acre hunting preserve. The two assembled a group of like-minded gun owners, including Bob Ricker, a former NRA general counsel and gun industry lobbyist, and Joe Vince, previous firearms division chief of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. With the launch last fall of a website, huntersandshooters.org, the AHSA was born.
The success of the organization might depend on wooing gun enthusiasts like Eric Galicki, an electrical contractor and president of the Ipswich club, who stops to talk at the shooting range. "I've been a member of the NRA for 30 years, because there is no alternative," he says. "But I can't see any good that they've done." Galicki worries that the image of hunting has been damaged by its association with what he calls the group's more extreme positions. "The youth are almost embarrassed to take it up," he says. "It's almost like a redneck thing."
Central to AHSA's mission is a national legislative agenda that includes closing loopholes that let criminals purchase weapons at gun shows, banning military-style assault weapons, requiring training for gun owners, and pushing for issues like wildlife conservation that Rosenthal says the NRA has neglected.
The AHSA's ability to change the debate may depend on whether it can persuade gun owners that it isn't, as the NRA has called it, "the enemy in camouflage." In addition to Rosenthal's efforts to restrict handguns - alongside a Kennedy, no less - is Ricker's self-described reputation as a "turncoat" in the NRA for testifying in Congress against gun manufacturers and Schoenke's long association with the Democratic Party. "I think we've seen a trend over the last few years of gun control groups trying to hide their true agenda by using poll-tested monikers that they believe will fool the American people," says Andrew Arulanandam, the NRA's director of public affairs. "I suspect this group follows that mold."
As he and other board members position AHSA, Rosenthal notes that there are 20 million gun owners in the United States - and only 4 million are NRA members. His group hopes to pull together some of the remainder and to promote an agenda that supports both hunting and stricter controls, to offer moderate gun owners an advocacy group and moderate candidates cover between political extremes. They've reached out to the AFL-CIO, which counts many gun owners among its membership. So far, the union's national leadership hasn't endorsed the new group, which may indicate an uphill climb for AHSA. "Change happens from the grass roots," says Rosenthal, who still hopes to sign up 1 million members within 18 months. "If we get a million, or tens of millions, then members of Congress are going to think twice before they vote."
