Where ever you see the word gun substitute motorcycle

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HOW TO BUY A GUN…Without Your Wife Finding Out

Most people think of gunrunning as a foreign adventure in thriller novels. My gunrunning, though, is a domestic foray through the home to get a new gun past my wife.

By Patrick F. McManus (1984)


Hubert, a young married fellow of my acquaintance, confided in me the other day that he and his wife had just had their first quarrel. .

“Oh yeah?” I said. “What about?” “About practically nothing,” he said. “I’ve been needing a new rifle, so I went out and bought one and took it home to show Joyce. Well, if she didn’t hit the ceiling! Mad? Whew! Can you believe that?”

“That was dumb, Hubie,” I said. “Risking your marriage over a new gun. I thought you were smarter that that.”

“I shouldn’t have bought the gun, huh?”

“Of course you should have bought the gun. You needed it, didn’t you? You just shouldn’t have shown the gun to Joyce. Have a little consideration for her feelings, Hubie. Wives have feeling too, you know. The only decent thing for a husband to do is to sneak the new gun into the house. Learn to sneak, man learn to sneak.”

“Really?” Hubie said. “I didn’t know.” During my talk with Hubie, it occurred to me that there are probably many other young married hunters out there who are equally in need of marriage counseling as it relates to wives and new guns. In the interest of averting as much marital discord in the hunting fraternity as possible, I have put together the following primer on strategies and tactics for bringing home a new gun.

First of all, let us consider the psychology of the young wife as it pertains to her husband’s guns. It is important to note that the first gun the husband brings home is greeted with considerable enthusiasm by the spouse, and she may even brag about it to her friends: “Fred bought a new gun the other day to hunt elk and doves and things with,” she will say. Of course Fred must then explain that the gun is limited to hunting elk or deer. For hunting doves he needs a shotgun, he tells her.

“Why can’t you hunt doves with the same gun?” she says. “I really think you could if you wanted to.”

Fred then explains the difference between a rifle and a shotgun, and his wife finally agrees that he probably does need another gun.

Now that’s the typical situation the young hunter faces. He starts with a base of two guns, his wife granting him the benefit of the doubt that two guns are actually needed. After the second gun, the argument of needing a new gun will be dismissed by the wife with an upward roll of the eyeballs and a big sigh. We are talking only third gun here, remember, nothing more. If you’re just married, upward-rolling eyeballs and big sighs may seem formidable obstacles, but they’re really not that serious. Go buy the gun and bring it home. The eyeball-rolling and big sighs will let up after a few days. Now comes the biggie: The Fourth Gun!

With the mere mention of your need for a fourth gun, the wife skips right over the eyeball-rolling and big sighs and goes directly to a recital of your deficiencies of character, weird masculine quirks, and all sins committed to date. She will bring up such matters as saving for baby’s college education, the fact that she is still is wearing the clothes her parents bought for her in high school, the threatening note from the electric company, and so on.

The fourth gun is the tough one and, in the face of this spousal assault, there is always the temptation to sneak the fourth gun. That’s a mistake. Your wife’s knowing you purchase a fourth gun is essential to further development of your gun collection. Here’s why. After you bring the gun home and show it to your wife, she will shake her head and say, “I don’t know why you need all those guns.” Note that she doesn’t say “four guns” but rather the vague and general “all those guns.” Henceforth, she will think of your gun collection, not in terms of specific numbers, but as a single collective entity—all!

To thoroughly grasp this important concept, suppose your wife is dusting the gun case, “Him and all those guns,” she might say to herself, possibly with a very tiny tolerant smile. What she fails to notice is that there are now five guns in the case! Once the psychological barrier of the fourth gun is crossed, the gun collection can be expanded indefinitely without the wife noticing, provided the husband uses some common sense and doesn’t add too many guns at once. Two or three a year is about right, spaced at decent intervals.

There is one pitfall in this strategy—the gun cabinet itself. Although the wife will never bother to count the guns, she will notice that there are three empty slots in the cabinet. Therefore, you must make sure that there always three empty slots in the cabinet, even as your collection expands from four to sixty guns. If you plan on enlarging your collection, buy a gun cabinet that can be expanded by adding new sections so that there are always three or more empty slots. It works. My wife of 30 years told me the other day that she must be slowing down with age. “When we were first married,” she said, “I could dust that gun cabinet of yours in 10 seconds and now it takes me nearly half an hour.”

But how do you get all those guns into the house without your wife knowing, you ask. Actually, it is all right if every few years you simply walk into the house and say, “Look, dear, I bought a new gun.”

“Neato,” she will say, “I’m ecstatic. Now tell me, what did you want to buy another gun for when you already have all those guns? I’ll be you haven’t shot most of them in the past five years.”
Shoot them? Yes, a wife will actually say that. She will not be able to comprehend the fact that you needed the gun because you needed it. She will not understand that you need the guns just to be there, to be your guns, to be looked at and fondled from time to time. She will not be able to fathom that you need the guns even though you don’t need to shoot them. Tell her a gun collection is like wilderness. Even though we don’t use it all the time, we need to know it’s there. Probably it won’t do any good to tell her that, but it’s worth a try.

Stating the simple truth often works in explaining an occasional gun purchase to your wife. But why take unnecessary risk? Go with your best lie and get the gun stashed in your expandable gun cabinet as quickly as possible.

Oddly enough, there are few really good lies for explaining the purchase of a new gun. There is the classic “A Fantastic Bargain,” of course, in which you tell your wife that the gun you just paid $300 for was on sale for $27.50. If her eyebrows shoot up in disbelief, you mention that three men in white coats showed up at the sport shop and led the manager away before he could slash the prices on the rest of the guns. Indeed, you say, you could have picked up five more brand-new guns for a total of $85, but you didn’t want to take excessive advantage of a crazy person.

The “Play On Her Sympathy Ploy” works well on young, inexperienced wives. It goes something like this: Rush into the house wiping tears of joy from your cheeks. Then cry out, “Look, Martha. Look! A man at the garage sold me this rifle. It’s identical to the one my grandfather gave me on his deathbed. Gramps said to me, ‘Boy, I’m givin’ you ol’ Gerty, here, because every time you shoot it, you will remember all the good times you and me had together.’ Oh, how I hated to sell that rifle to pay for Momma’s operation! But now I got one just like it! Or maybe it’s even the same rifle! Do you think it might actually be the same rifle, Martha?”

Warning! Don’t ever try the “Sympathy Ploy” on a wife you’ve been married to for longer than five years—unless you want to see a woman laugh herself sick. It’s a disgusting spectacle, I can tell you.

The “Fantastic Investment” lie will work on occasion, provided you lay the groundwork carefully in advance. “That ol’ Harvey Schmartz is a shrewd one,” you say. “He bought this .48-caliber Thumlicker for $600 as an investment. Three weeks later, he sold it for $87,000! Boy, I wish I could lay my hands on a .48-caliber Thumlicker. We’d sell it when I retire and buy a condo in Aspen and tour Europe with the change.”

After you’ve used up all your best lies, you are left with only one option. You must finally screw up your courage, square your jaw, and make up your mind that your going to do what you probably should have done all along—sneak the new guns into the house.

Here are some proven techniques for gun-sneaking:
• The Surprise Party. Your arrive home and tell your wife that you have to go to a surprise party for one of your hunting partners and that you picked up the special cake on your way home. “Oh, how cute!” she will exclaim. “A birthday cake shaped like a rifle!” This is also known as “The Gun-In-Cake Trick.”
• The Lamp. You buy a lamp shade and attach it to the muzzle of a new rifle. “Look, sweetheart,” you say to your spouse. “I bought a new lamp for the living room.” She gags. “Not for my living room.” She growls. “Take it to your den and don’t ever let me see that monstrosity again!” A variation of this ploy is to tie a picture wire to the new rifle and call it a wall hanging.
• The Loan. A hunting friend shows up at your door and hands you your new gun. “Thanks for loaning me one of your rifles,” he says. “I’ll do the same for you sometime.” Make sure your accomplice can be trusted, though. I tried “The Loan” with my friend Retch Sweeney one time and he didn’t show up at my door with the rifle for three weeks. He arrived on the day after hunting season, as I recall.
• Spare Parts. Disassemble the gun and carry it home in a shopping bag. Mention casually to the Mrs. that you picked up some odds and ends from the junk bin down at Joe’s Gunsmithing. Works like a charm! (By the way, does anyone know where the little wishbone-shaped gizmo goes on an automatic shotgun?)