AHSA in the News Again

While Google Alerts are showing a veritable smorgasboard of PSH-filled reporting, I found something from Jeffrey Birnbaum that's even more astounding, a balanced report on gun groups (emphasis mine):

New Pro-Gun Group Hopes to Draw From the NRA

The American Hunters and Shooters Association is the latest organization to try to dethrone the NRA as chief spokesman for people who care about guns. The association positions itself as an NRA alternative, a group that likes guns and those who shoot them but believes the NRA is too absolutist, especially when it comes to opposing almost any curb on the right to bear arms.

Too absolutist? What's the GOA, then, chopped liver?

As proof of his gun-toting credentials, Schoenke says he likes nothing better than heading to Maryland's Eastern Shore and shooting a duck, then cleaning it, cooking it and eating it. "I own guns," he boasts. "I have guns everywhere."

Schoenke hopes this macho, carnivorous image will make pro-gun voters more open to accepting "common sense" limits on gun buying. Such changes can't be so bad, he wants gunners to say, if fellow enthusiasts also support them.

Gunners aren't saying what you think they are. They're saying "These guys are full of crap." As for macho and carnivorous, well ....

Later in the article, there is balance achieved:

The NRA also asserts that Schoenke's association is a thinly veiled front for gun-control advocates, and offers as proof Schoenke's $5,000 donation to Handgun Control Inc., predecessor to the main anti-gun lobby, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Schoenke rejects the assertion; he says he was only trying to help a cause important to his wife.

Suuuure you were.

Unfortunately for Schoenke, the Brady Campaign basically agrees with the NRA. "I see our issues as complementary to theirs," Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign, says about Schoenke's association. "They're a positive group."

The kiss of death? I certainly hope so.

UPDATE: Uncle and Bitter have more.

Pretty bad when the MSM is busting you out.