I often have people tell me that their spouse won’t allow them to buy a gun or have a gun in the house. And it’s not always wives causing the problems either. I recently had two women talk to me to see how they could convince their husbands to allow them to have a gun.
When I’m asked this question I’m often reminded of one fellow’s response that I read on a gun website. His answer was, “You royally screwed up the mate selection process.” If you happen to fall into this category, not all hope is lost because I’m going to tell you the best way I’ve found to help anti-gun spouses see the light.
First off, I don’t think it’s a good idea to sign them up for any training courses. I know that sounds strange coming from a person who makes his living teaching gun training, but it can be very dangerous to do so. If you’ve been around gun training for any time at all, you obviously know there are all types of trainers out there – the good, the bad and the ugly.
For instance, I remember when my wife Amanda first started getting into guns, I convinced her to go to a class with me. The fellow who ran the class was former military and forgot he was teaching civilians and not other military personnel.
In other words, he yelled, barked and thought it was a good idea to act like a drill Sergeant. He completely didn’t understand who he was teaching and I saw Amanda and others in the class getting intimidated by him. When we left I knew she was going to tell me she hated the class (which she did) and that she would never take training from that guy again.
Luckily for me, Amanda wasn’t anti-gun and knew that all trainers weren’t like him.
So, instead of taking your spouse to a training course where the instructor could scare them and make them forever hate guns, what I want you to do instead, is to take them to the shooting range. I want the two of you to plan a shooting range date. Go to a place where you can rent guns and just take turns between the two of you trying out different handguns.
I’ve found that taking someone to the range is one of the most effective ways to show people that shooting guns can be fun and they’re actually not that bad after all. And once you take your spouse to the range there’s a good chance they’ll want to do it again and want to learn more.
That’s when you sign them up for a concealed carry class or an intro to handguns class, but choose your instructor wisely and make sure they’re a “people person.” But let’s say you do everything above and your spouse still hates guns.
Well, in all seriousness, I would tell them that you’re getting a gun and that it will be stored safely in a gun vault and that they don’t ever have to use it. I realize that marriage is give and take and you have to choose your battles. But in my opinion, protecting my family is something that is non-negotiable. After all, how could anyone really think to themselves: “Yes, dear. Let’s not have a gun. Let’s have you get raped, while I’m forced to watch, because we had no way to protect ourselves.”
Not in my household.
