FREDERICK, Md. (AP) - Maryland gun owners must wield more political clout, says state Sen. Alex X. Mooney, co-chairman of a newly formed group that aims to register them to vote.

The Second Amendment Coalition, named for the constitutional provision guaranteeing Americans' right to keep and bear arms, went to work last weekend at a Frederick gun show. Mooney, R-Frederick, and co-chairman Robert Culver of Burtonsville, said they will visit other gun shows in Maryland this summer to distribute voter registration forms and pro-voting bumper stickers.

Neither had statistics on the number of Maryland gun owners who aren't registered voters.

Mooney said Second Amendment proponents "tend to be people who don't want the government to intervene in their lives as far as taking away their guns and generally tend to be people that don't turn to government" for services.

"Perhaps in return they don't feel the need to get involved in the government process as much," he said.

In a press release announcing the drive, Mooney said gun owners "need to become a major political force" in Maryland. "The 2AM Coalition will make gun owners aware that every day, liberal politicians are working in Annapolis and in Washington to take away their constitutional right to own a gun."

Mooney has opposed gun-control measures such as Maryland's requirement that all handguns sold in the state be equipped with integrated trigger locks, and a proposed state ban on assault-style weapons that failed by one vote in a Senate committee this year.

Leah Barrett, executive director of the gun-control group Ceasefire Maryland, Inc., said the Second Amendment Coalition is merely a Republican publicity ploy. She said that during the debate about banning semiautomatic rifles, which Mooney calls "sport-utility guns," gun-rights advocates packed the hearing room.

"These guys have a lot of - I guess you could term it passion - on their side, so I don't see that that's the problem in Maryland," she said. "The ones who feel passionately that everyone should have an assault weapon, I don't think that these guys are the ones who are lackadaisical about voting."