John Rosenthal, again...

JonJ

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Didn't the Glob do this same story last summer? Just keeping it alive for election season I suppose.
Does anyone know his "shootin' buddies"?
Here it is in it's entirety in case they archive it (make you pay for this crap)

Straight Shooter
John Rosenthal's huge Mass. Pike billboard crusades against the ravages of gun violence. So what's he doing with that shotgun?


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."

Original link: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2006/02/05/straight_shooter/
 
Sweet, at last a moderate, rational gun control advocate ! Just like all the folks in the United Kingdom who cooperated with the authorities and the government :(

The Second Amendment ain't about duck hunting or trap shooting !

Mark
 
Rosenthal is a gun grabber, plain and simple. He's simply clever enough to realize that the most effective way to move in that direction is ti pretend to be a gun loving moderate. He's also a bald face liar whenever he thinks that's the best way to go.

Don't get me wrong. He'se not one of those "extremists" who want to take away everybody's guns. He's perfectly willing for the rich and connected (like he is) to have their $5,000 shotguns and other toys. But definitely no guns for the great unwashed masses who wouldn't be welcome in his social circles.

Ken
 
just ridiculous. I don't really see any difference between what he's doing and a woman going out and protesting abortion and then going out and getting one herself because it just wasn't a good time to have a baby... You're either for it or against it. Nobody needs somebody on the fence to be that vocal. Just ridiculous, and I'm surprised that any private club would allow him to be a member.
 
Ken is right.

This guy is a slimy character who knows how to play the media like a fiddle!

I've talked with him one-on-one at the State House, finally gave up and just walked away.

He's a two-faced lying bastard who will do anything possible to get his way. And he is wealthy enough to pull all this crap off too! He's a very dangerous character.

Any gun club that allowed him to join, deserves him. If the other members had the balls, they would drop out and leave him to finance the entire club operation!
 
The goon is on WRKO milking the Cheney thing now as a hunting expert. [roll]

Anybody else notice how weak the locals in the RKO lineup have gotten?
 
crakowski said:
The goon is on WRKO milking the Cheney thing now as a hunting expert. [roll]

Anybody else notice how weak the locals in the RKO lineup have gotten?
Yup, they aren't doing us any favors. This thing has been blown way out of proportion and Anti 2nd Amendment people like Rosenthal are just eating it up.
 
well when the NRA lets extremists like Ted Nugent speak for them this is the sort of outcome one has to expect. Moderates with liberal agendas moving in to sweep up the fence sitters shell shocked by the extremist regalia of the NRA's poor choice in speakers.
i love ted, but hes no spokesman...The gun debate in the public eye is a delicate battle of words..If and only when it becomes a war of weapons should we be calling in sweaty teddy :P until then we needa more eloquent and tactful speaker.
 
SnakeEye said:
well when the NRA lets extremists like Ted Nugent speak for them this is the sort of outcome one has to expect. Moderates with liberal agendas moving in to sweep up the fence sitters shell shocked by the extremist regalia of the NRA's poor choice in speakers.
i love ted, but hes no spokesman...The gun debate in the public eye is a delicate battle of words..If and only when it becomes a war of weapons should we be calling in sweaty teddy :P until then we needa more eloquent and tactful speaker.
But people like Rosenthal are not it!
 
Hell if he were half the flag wrapped, bible thumpin gun rights superhero he tries to personify he would be right here on the front lines of the gun control war in Massachusetts..perhaps one of the bloodiest battlefields on the war against our constitutional rights. Soon to become the ground zero testbed of all future gun control schemes by the feel of things as of late.
If he were a true patriot for our rights he would be here.. not chest thumping at speeches while riding the victory crest of moderate victories in pushover southern states.. come to the front and put your wealth and influence where its most needed..and bring along everyone else
 
Heard him on WRKO. He's like the people I know in England who tell me that you CAN get a shotgun to be used ONLY for sport.

Hey I LOVE sport shooting (I have a friend who's gonna get me a little more into shooting clays) but that's not why gun ownership is important.

Of course Rosenthal probably thinks that if ever he NEED a gun for anything but hunting and sporting there just will happen to be a Cop near by....and if there isn't he "just shouldn't have been there"

He's the kind of goon that thinks the term "Right to Be" sounds Barbaric.

-Weer'd Beard
 
Make no mistake, Rosenthal was at one point an anti-gun lobbyist in Massachusetts, and he has hired others to be anti-gun lobbyists.

The AHSA is an organization whose apparent purpose is to "fool" others into believing that they are mainstream. This was tried a few years ago by Americans for Gun Safety (AGS) in an attempt to pull off the Clintonesque tack of claiming the middle ground while remaining liberal in conviction.
 
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