At 65, Korwin, with his professorial white beard and bushy eyebrows, may not be a familiar face. But you’ve likely heard his message. He’s the man millions of gun owners count on to fight for their right to bear arms. By his own count, he’s logged more than a thousand interviews with the press. Behind the scenes, though, he makes the rounds talking to tea partyers, state legislators and even the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, helping to shape the argument for Second Amendment rights. “He’s utterly changed the paradigm for the right-to-bear-arms community,” says Charles Heller, former executive director of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership. Korwin has even changed the vocabulary. Instead of gun control, it’s crime control; assault weapons are household firearms; and they’re not gun rights, they’re civil and human rights. . . .

However you come down on one of the most controversial issues of the day, one that only gets more heated with every heartbreaking mass shooting, Korwin turns out to be quite a surprise. In some ways, he’s the ultimate accidental gun advocate. This (once) red-haired Bronx native with an English degree will tell you he’s more into funk music and bird feeders than AK-47s. Korwin stumbled into his profession serendipitously, when he discovered a whole unexplored (and lucrative) world related to firearms: the welter of laws and regulations that govern them. To him, defending the Second Amendment is just a job, more intellectual exercise than heart-thumping rallying cry for the card-carrying NRA folk.