Michael R. Weisser was born in Washington, D.C., educated in New York City public schools, received an A.B. from CCNY (1967) and a Ph.D. from Northwestern University (1971). His field of study was economic history with a monograph published by University of Chicago Press. Subsequent academic books were published by Basic Books – Harper & Row and Harvester Press.

From 1971 to 1980, Weisser taught at CCNY, University of California, Berkeley and University of South Carolina. From 1981 through 1983 he was Public Information Officer for the New York State Assembly, then was Director of Development at NYU and moved into the private sector in 1986, retiring in 2005 from MassMutual Financial Services where he was a Vice President and IT Enterprise Architect.

Alongside his business career, Weisser has been involved with the gun business since 1965, when he first worked in a relative's gun factory in North Carolina, then operated a Smith & Wesson law enforcement distributorship in South Carolina, then operated a sporting goods distributorship in New York City, and has been a retail gun dealer, manufacturer and importer in Massachusetts. He currently conducts lethal force certifications for the Department of Homeland Security and the Energy Department.

He has published 7 books on the gun business and from 2013 until 2018, wrote a weekly column for Huffington Post. He has written over 1,000 columns on his own blog, www.mikethegunguy.com.