AHSA seems to want the middle ground, to be pro-gun and pro-conservation.
It's no secret I have my differences with current NRA management, but I'd be more interested in saving hunters from surface-deep writers like Bill Schneider. I posted the following and encourage you to add your thoughts:
Good grief, Bill, I can't believe anyone could write anything this ignorant unintentionally. Ten minutes worth of research would have told you all you needed to know about AHSA--assuming you don't know perfectly well what they're about.
And as for being a "new group," where have you been? Pro-Bill of Rights activists have been warning gun owners about them for almost a year now.
AHSA's president, John Rosenthal, founded "Stop Handgun Violence," and is as big a gungrabber as you will find. Their Board of Directors include honchos from Crime Guns Solutions, ex-BATF careerists who worked to give ammo to the gun maker lawsuits. CGS exec Gerald Nunziato had this to say:
"“If it wasn'’t for criminals, there wouldn'’t be a gun industry in this country. The only people [NRA and other gun-rights groups are] protecting are criminals."
AHSA has ties with a democrat consulting group, DCS, whose clients included Nancy Pelosi and John Conyers.
[Robert] Ricker may as well change his name to Judas--here's what he said about the gun lawsuits [when he] worked for "the gun lobby":
"We'’ll be able to show that what these lawyers are actually after is money."
Now that he's betrayed the people who put his name on the map, he's become an "expert witness" FOR the gun lawsuits.
So was he lying then for money or is he lying now for money--and either way, how can anyone believe a thing he says?
As for the machine guns and hunters LIE, c'mon, Bill, if you don't know the "assault weapon" ban covered semiautos, you really have no business making public commentary on the matter until you do some learning. The confusion between the two types of firearms is intentional deception proposed by Josh Sugarmann of the Violence Policy Center, who stated:
"The semi-automatic weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons - anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun - can only increase that chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons."
Besides which, maybe you can show us where the Second Amendment, that is, the right of the People to be the final guarantor of their own liberty, concerns itself with mere sporting purpose (which, by the way, was one of the rationales employed in Nazi "gun control" laws)?