This is the New Yorker Radio Hour with a special preview.

In the next episode of the Radio Hour, staff writer Evan Osnos talks with gun blogger Mike

Weiser about how the NRA uses fear to influence the debate on gun regulation.

Weiser's a former gun dealer, gun safety instructor, and a lifelong NRA member.

They talked shortly after the mass killing in Orlando.

This interview will be part of the New Yorker Radio Hour's June 24th episode.

You know, I was a typical kid in the 50s.

I had three hobbies, which was toy soldiers, toy guns, and toy trains.

My mother threw out the trains, which is why Lionel trains are worth so much. And I'm not sure what happened to the stamp collection. But I stayed with the guns. What was it, do you think, about guns? Beyond the obvious little kids, you know, love to pick up a plastic tank. I think, you know, I don't think that that's obvious in the sense that I think the little kids, you know, love to pick up a plastic? I think, you know, I don't think that that's obvious in the sense that I think the little

kids, you know, having the gun playing with it, thinking of all the fantasies that involves,

I think it just stays with you into adulthood.

It's really no different.

I mean, if you were to go to a model train show, you'd see the same crowd.

Did you grow up hunting? Were you in a place? No, I did hunt a lot. I have hunted a lot over the years, but I grew up actually in the middle of Washington, D.C. And as a matter of fact, when I grew up in Washington, which was in the 50s, that's when I joined the NRA when I was 11 years old because I was a member of a rifle team, an NRA sponsored rifle team that we shot in the rifle range in my brother's junior high school, McFarland Junior High School.

And I would take the gun home Fridays in a little sack, walk home for a mile, clean it, play with it, bring it back

Monday. And this is the middle of Washington, D.C. And that was not unusual for the way which people

thought and dealt with guns back in those days. You now live outside Springfield, Massachusetts,

home of Smith and Weston. It's really sort of in the center of the gun world in America.

How big of an industry are we talking about? How many people are? It's actually a very tiny industry. I mean, there are, you know,

there are five companies that together, if you go in any gun shop, these five companies are maybe

six companies, 80% of the guns that are in these shops are made by these six companies.

Smith & Wesson has, I don't know,

...