by Ron Dotson
A KeepAndBearArms.com Member Who Just Renewed
August 24, 2001

All KABA members and visitors who pay attention are aware (or should be aware) that AOL views gun owners as evil, and believes that individuals should not be allowed to buy, sell, or own firearms. AOL has contributed many thousands of dollars to achieve those ends, and have even fired some their own employees -- a KABA member, in fact -- for possessing firearms in a public parking lot adjacent to an AOL office. In spite of these atrocities, there are a few KABA members who nonetheless retain AOL as their ISP of choice. Why anyone who believes in our right to keep and bear arms would contribute to such an organization by paying for their service is inconceivable to me, particularly in view of AOL's widely known poor level of customer service.

For those who choose to do so, for whatever reasons, I urge you to use @KeepAndBearArms.com as your email address in public correspondence and especially in anything that appears on KABA. Every email that contains an AOL address is an advertisement for them, and it appears on the top line of every email message that you send. KABA email is free to everyone, whether you are a member of KABA or not -- and you can advertise the wording of the Second Amendment. Email to your KABA address can be automatically forwarded to your AOL address, or to any other email address you wish. Even better, use KABA as your internet service provider (ISP) and cut AOL out of the picture altogether. There are also many other low cost internet service providers who would be happy to provide you with internet access, and another KABA Member has recently begun a list of those who support the right to keep and bear arms. (See Angel Shamaya's note below, #5.)

Even if you keep AOL as your ISP, you need not use AOL's email service. You can use AOL to access the internet, but use a different provider for your email, such as the free KABA web based email mentioned above, or a low cost Post Office Protocol (POP) server. Two companies that provide personal email service at very low cost are NetIdentity and SpamCop, and I'm sure there are many others. SpamCop even filters out the spam from your regular email and makes spam reporting a breeze. With these services, you run an email program on your own computer just as you would with AOL, except that there are many different email clients you can use, such as the free programs Outlook Express, Scribe, Pegasus, etc., or low cost programs like Eudora and Poco.

In my opinion, use of an AOL email address is contrary to the spirit of the KABA terms of membership.

I also think advertising or publishing the addresses of anti-gun ownership organizations like AOL defiles the pages of KABA, and that references to them on these pages should be eliminated. If we can't even take our own advice to boycott these companies on the pages of KABA, how can we expect our members to boycott them? What's next, a KABA advertisement for Levis Jeans?

Before The Member's Vote, a Response from Angel Shamaya

When Ron Dotson, a true patriot, wrote to me challenging me with the above information, I urged him to write the above and publish it on our site -- for several reasons:

1. Others, even AOL users, may agree with him after reading the above message.
2. I refused, in the past, to cut off publication access to people who use AOL, but the fact that we offer a free email account that can be forwarded to an AOL account is a legitimate gripe.
3. I haven't wanted to offend AOL users who only have AOL as an option in their areas. But it never occurred to me -- or if it did I was too busy to give it much thought -- that our email addresses could be used to forward to an AOL account and thus wouldn't really even pose an inconvenience to those who still choose to fund those socialists.
4. I have heard from a few diehard gun rights activists that use AOL who actively promote gun rights inside the AOL chats, forums, etc., and I wouldn't want to infringe on the means by which a patriot can convert a few lost souls.  But then again, even those folks can use a KABA email address when they publish on our site, too.
5. And, finally, when we launched our ISP, our reports thereafter about AOL's shortcomings were used to accuse us of being greedy and of attacking them for selfish personal interests. (American "allies" who abhor capitalism?) Fortunately, to dispense with that hogwash for good, I submit to you another project another KeepAndBearArms.com member -- Gentleman Jim Garofolo -- has launched. Jim has pulled together a listing of Pro-RKBA ISP's. Ours is on the list, but so are several others, all of whom we support in spirit: http://users.oco.net/jimg/support2nd/.

So let's put this to a vote. Only paid members qualify for the privilege of voting on this issue; nobody else will be able to access this vote. KeepAndBearArms.com members can click the below link to weigh in on whether or not AOL users who publish on KABA should be required to use one of our free email addresses, or one from another place besides Amerika Online.

https://www.KeepAndBearArms.com/members/voting/default.asp

In Ron's followup message, he'll address the use of Paypal by vendors on our site.