GUNPAL is an alternative to PayPal™ that donates a portion of the proceeds from every transaction to a Non-Profit Organization of your choice.

GUNPAL does not discriminate based on the nature of your transaction, requiring only that the merchandise or services you buy and sell be legal. See our User Agreement for more information. (PayPal™ is a Trademark of eBay, Inc.)

This morning I was looking at an item in an online auction and I noticed "preferred payment through GunPal". At first I thought it was just a joke - a wink-wink nudge-nudge. For a while now (from what I understand) PayPal has refused to allow their service be used to pay for any type of transactions involving firearms, firearms parts, accessories, etc. I guess the PayPal people think they are doing their part to get rid of "evil guns". That's besides the point and the topic of a different discussion, best served over a few cold ones. Anyway, a lot of transactions for firearms and parts and accessories are still done over PayPal with the unspoken understanding that you won't tell PayPal that the transaction is for a firearm. Now you can see why when I first read "GunPal" I thought it was just a satirical poke at PayPal.

Lo and behold! There really is a GunPal. You can see right up front what their mission statement is. Basically it goes something like this:

"All you firearms enthusiasts that PayPal refused to serve and pissed off. We'll take you. In fact, we'll serve you proudly and cherish you AND we'll donate a portion of each transaction to your favorite charity - hopefully it's the NRA."

Kudos, GUNPAL for realizing that while brokering transactions for firearms is a niche service, it is a pretty big niche with average transaction amounts being much higher than those for normal online auction tchotchke (yes I had to look up the correct spelling). It is also fairly recession proof: when times are hard people sell their heirlooms for cash.

I also noticed that within the last few weeks Auction Arms (http://auctionarms.com), one of the larger firearms auction sites and official auction site of the NRA, named GUNPAL as it's preferred payment processor.

Good luck to you GUNPAL, I'm sure our paths will cross.