They probably just forgot to pay the hosting bill.

Another possibility: spammers could have hijacked the domain and been using it as a spam engine. When this happens, and when the spam starts hitting AOL addresses, AOL will come in to the ISP like an 800-pound gorilla and demand that the ISP provider take down the site immediatly...or AOL will blacklist the ISP.

It happened a few months ago to a professional society I belong to. It was fast, the website came down in about a day and we had to locate a new ISP and rebuild the site.

torch passed to AHSA circa 2004?

Well, THAT’s interesting. It used to be one of those sites hidden behind a legal DBA agency that protected the actual owners from being exposed on the ‘net. Today I see that the administrator is jsoderburg@third-way.com (www.third-way.com), 2000 L Street NW, Washington, DC 20036 and lists the Americans for Gun Safety Foundation (AGS Foundation) and hostreaction.com as contacts – which have both been suspended as well.

Forgot to pay their pound of flesh this month, perhaps?

For more information go to http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/results.jsp?domain=americansforgunsafety.com or use another internet WHOIS provider.

Ah, yes. Tides.

Theresa Heinz' favorite charity.

Seems to be back up now, although many links are 404.

[after a few minutes]More and more coming up. I think they had a server glitch.

While the site seems to be up, their last entry under "breaking news" is dated 9/23/05.

Not totally dead, just...moribund.

Just so you know, the AGS Foundation website (http://w3.agsfoundation.com/) says the same thing (account suspended), and also says Third way set it up.

Notice as well that the registration address for AGS is:
2000 L Street NW
Washington, DC 20036
US

Which is also the same address as Third way.

Further to GeorgiaPacking's point about addresses, I see Jim Kessler, formerly(?) the policy director for AGS, is Third Way's VP for Policy. I rather suspect AGS has been, for all practical purposes, disbanded, and its assets and policies subsumed into Third Way, which has a wider scope than gun issues alone.

Has anyone here given serious consideration to the possibility that Third Way, or rather, Kessler, means it when he recommends that the Democratic party distance itself from the gun control lobby? He makes a pretty compelling argument in one policy brief that a large majority of voters are pro-Second Amendment, and that Democratic candidates need to be seen to be supporting gun rights lest they keep missing out on votes from gun owners who might be inclined to vote Democrat were it not for the party's (not undeservedly) perceived anti-gun stance. Personally, I'm much inclined to think Kessler's on the level; true, he's got that "gun show loophole" bee in his bonnet, but that is likely a result of being misinformed, rather than being deceitful.