I don't know what Michael Dell's position is on gun control. It wouldn't surprise me if he is for it. 40% of the people in this country are, whether we like it or not. If Dell, the company, were to take a strident, public, position for extreme gun control measures, I would cease to be a customer.

However, I wonder if that is the full story. I could see a company having measures in place to avoid doing business with other companies who appear to be fringe companies. This might have no more nefarious purpose than keeping their name out of the papers and off of 60 Minutes. The company name, "Weekend Combat", is a little inflammatory, in my opinion. You may not agree with my assessment about this name. What do you think Dell should do if the company name was, say, "Death to ******s/Lesbians/Hippies" or "Sex with Underage girlz" or some similar? (I apologise to any Blacks in our audience for my choice of words in the previous sentence, I am trying to make a point about offensive company names and realize the magnitude of the term)

If they were to refuse to sell to Ruger or Bushmaster, I would be concerned. I might then ask them if they also refuse to do business with DuPont or IBM, both of whom have a much larger defense business.

I say this as an avid gun owner and NRA member. While I fully support standing up for our rights, it doesn't do any good to push people's buttons. It is simply common sense to realise that some people are afraid of gun owners, and we shouldn't go out of our way to convince them that we are trigger happy nuts. Terms like "Weekend Combat" do that. The business owner that picked this for a name has rocks in his head and needs to go take a Dale Carnegie course on how to win friends and influence people.

Before anyone goes off half cocked, I would suggest simply asking Dell what their position is. I am sure that the person who picks up the phone will be happy to tell you whether they have a policy aginst selling to gun owners.

Now, as to AOL and E-Bay. I don't know about AOL, but my understanding is that E-Bay quit handling firearms related transactions some time back. I don't recall it being particularly politically motivated. More, I thought they were concerned about the legal climate in this country, and that they were simply worried about being the big pockets to be sued if someone bought a gun and then did some harm with it. I may not like that position, but it seems like a rational business decision to make, given the legal environment in the country at this time. E-Bay is not 'run' by AOL. It is a separate company, with separate management and separate stock. Check out the profile on Yahoo at http://biz.yahoo.com/p/e/ebay.html

The worst thing we can do as gun owners is to run around peeing on people that are afraid of us. The best thing we can do is to make sure that people understand us as we are - law abiding good neighbors. That means we need to be patient, knowledgable, understanding, and forgiving. Like Christ and Buddha. Know what I mean? So let's be sure to do our homework.