I used to be a big fan of eBay. I bought and sold items on eBay fairly often. I made some decent money on eBay. I even run a very successful on-line community at eBay.

One of the great things about eBay was the ability to obtain hard-to-find items, mostly replacement parts and accessories, for my firearms. Some of these parts were purchased to replace worn-out parts. Others were purchased to make a firearm perform better. Still others were purchased simply because I wanted them.

On July 30, 2007, Matt Halprin, eBay's Vice-President of Trust & Safety, announced that eBay would be further restricting its listings of gun parts on the auction-style website. Halprin states, "[W]e will prohibit listings of any firearm part that is required for the firing of a gun. This includes items like bullet tips, brass casings and shells, barrels, slides, cylinders, magazines, firing pins, trigger assemblies, etc." The reasoning behind Halprin's decision is that because some of the items were used in the April shootings at Virginia Tech, banning these items from eBay is "the right thing to do."

Of course, eBay is a private enterprise and it has the right to conduct business as it sees fit. However, its reasoning is silly, and Halprin's logic seems to be taking a holiday. And, of course, there are other auction websites out there, such as GunBroker and AuctionArms, where you can purchase similar items. However, both of these websites, and any other auction website, suffers from a single problem - name recognition. eBay has the distinction of being the most well-known auction website on the Internet. When people think of auction websites, they think eBay. Even Yahoo couldn't compete with eBay and wound up shutting down its auction website earlier this year.

Halprin and his cohorts at eBay make a lot of money from the sale of firearms parts and accessories. This is a huge section within the Sporting Goods category of eBay, and since eBay makes money simply for listing an item there (never mind the final value fees and all of the extra fees that are paid to make an auction attractive), it doesn't matter if an item even sells or not. eBay isn't shutting down the firearms section because it isn't a moneymaker.

eBay's anti-gun stance is well known in the firearms community. One can easily assume that eBay is frightened over the notion of carrying firearms parts and accessories. They are frightened that someone is going to sue them because a nutcase procured an item from its auction site. However, when you step back and think for a moment or two, you realize why logic has taken a holiday over at eBay.

You can buy "IT" on eBay. That's their slogan. You can buy vehicles, knives, rope, tools and just about anything else that comes to mind. So, this brings some rather obvious questions to the surface.

Let's say that Joe Sixpack finds a dreamy car on eBay. He is the high bidder, and he takes delivery of the vehicle. That night, to celebrate his fantastic purchase, he has some adult beverages and wrecks his car and kills someone in the process.

Isn't eBay on the hook, just the same, for helping to broker the sale of a car to a drunk driver as it would be on the hook for brokering the sale of a gun barrel to a murderer?

Isn't eBay on the hook, just the same, if a teenager hangs herself with rope purchased on eBay? What if she slashed her wrists instead with a knife purchased on eBay?

If someone breaks into a house with tools purchased on eBay, does that not expose eBay to some sort of liability?

These aren't the questions that eBay and others want to think about. They'd rather think about ways to do away with guns. Cars, rope and knives are inanimate objects. Firearms are evil.

In the meantime, everyone is going to continue to purchase the items they need from other, legal avenues. The only difference is that eBay has made these items a little more difficult to find.

But, at least eBay's management will feel a whole lot better about what they're doing. I'm sure they believe they're making a difference.