The presence of those members was not lost on our legislators. Don't get the idea that electronic communications is a panacea. They first tried their own BBS, but instate toll charges worked against it. The association discontinued their BBS and now does their program on CompuServe's Outdoor Forum. By using CompuServe, we can do everything we did on the BBS and need not even dedicate a computer to do the job.
Data networks have individual benefit as well.
Here are more examples. I posted a question about my problem of crushing the cases when reloading 223 ammo. A few questions in the forum brought enough responses to write a small book. British media are rabidly anti-firearms. Consequently, we wait at least a month for UK shooting publications to restore the balance.