Mike Weisser is my favorite gun dealer. The longtime proprietor of the Ware Gun Shop in Ware, Mass., Weisser, 70, estimates he has sold more than 40,000 guns in his career as a wholesaler and retailer. He also has a nice little business teaching a gun-safety course that Massachusetts requires of all new gun owners.
“I love guns,” he told me unabashedly when we spoke the other day. With a chuckle, he added, “I just bought one yesterday.”
There’s something else about Weisser: He strongly believes that the country needs a new approach to guns and gun violence — an approach that is more data-driven, less hyperbolic, and that emphasizes the public health aspect of gun violence. Using the pen name Mike the Gun Guy, Weisser writes a blog at The Huffington Post that encapsulates his approach. He is one of the few who has focused on suicides, which make up nearly two-thirds of all gun deaths. He has called out gun control advocates from time to time; he mainly thinks they are too often passive when confronted with the tactics of the National Rifle Association.
But he has also been relentless in taking on the N.R.A. He does not believe that the Second Amendment means that people ought to be able to take a gun anywhere they want. He includes in his emails a quote from the novelist Walter Mosley: “If you carry a gun, it’s bound to go off sooner or later.” A website called AmmoLand has described him as “basically a double agent agent [sic] working to undermine our Second [Amendment] rights with his articles.”
[For more of this story, written by Joe Nocera, go to http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11...lth.html?ref=opinion]
Comments (0)