Springfield, Missouri · Anno MMXXVI 601 pages · 70 chapters · 9 appendices · $47 The Gun Buyer's Manual · No. I
Thomas HadleyA Manual

Pay for the gun.
Not the name.

Walk into a shop with $400 and you will walk out having spent closer to $900 — and the gun was never the expensive part. This is the book that prices the whole ticket: the gun, the box of ammunition, and every add-on by the register. It teaches you to know what a thing is worth before he tells you — and every chapter ends with what it can’t do for you.

See the manual Read the math
20k+
YouTube subscribers
7-Day
Money-back guarantee
Thomas Hadley
“

Nobody at the counter is lying to you. They're just not paid to tell you the cheaper answer.

Thomas Hadley · Springfield, MO
I.
The Manual

One book. 601 pages. Nine parts, seventy chapters.

What the object is, where the shop earns, how to read a used gun, what happens at the counter, and what it costs after the receipt. Prices are dated and sourced in one appendix rather than scattered through six hundred pages — and every chapter ends with what it can't do.

The Gun Buyer's Manual by Thomas Hadley, first edition cover
Digital manual · First edition · MMXXVI

Everything you'd want to know before you hand over the money.

What the tag really means, and how to find out what a gun is worth in four minutes standing in the parking lot. Which add-ons are worth taking and which five aren't. How to read a used gun in twenty minutes and know whether to walk. How to find your own state's actual statute — and how to tell whether what you found is still current. What each cartridge costs per round. And the fifteen minutes a day that make you a better shot for nothing.

$47 One payment · yours forever
What you get for $47
Get the manual · $47
Instant access · pay once · yours forever
II.
The Math

Where the money actually goes at a gun counter.

Firearm margins are thin and every dealer knows it. The money is in what gets added between the glass and the door. Here is the same trip, priced twice.

A first purchase

As it's rung up

The same trip, after the Manual

Same gun, same range day
Run it for your year

How many times will you buy something at a gun counter this year?

3trips
1612
Save–

The top of that band is the whole difference on the ticket above — every add-on taken at the counter against every one bought on purpose. The bottom is that same difference over three, which is roughly what declining one or two things and checking one price actually looks like. Illustrative, not a promise: a shop offers a $600 buyer a different holster than a $250 buyer, so the figures move with the gun, and yours depend on your dealer and what you say yes to. Every line above has a chapter behind it.

III.
What's Inside

Exactly what you get for $47.

Nine parts, seventy chapters, in the order I'd read them. Part One is my own receipts. Tap any part to open it.

Plus nine appendices and a full index — my complete ledger, the dated price observations with their sources, the cost-per-round sheet with the blanks left in, fifteen tear-out cards, a 145-term glossary, the source list, a blank state worksheet, the reference tables, and the list of all 44 figures.
IV.
About the Author

Thomas Hadley.

Thomas Hadley

I'm fifty-eight, and I've spent almost all of that within an hour of Springfield, Missouri. I learned to shoot in the Ozarks on old rifles and shotguns that belonged to other people, years before I had the money to buy anything worth showing off. Weekend hunter, longtime shooter, lifelong collector.

I never wore a uniform and I was never a cop. Anybody who tells you those years don't teach a man things I'll never know is selling you something. What I have instead is repetition, a long list of ordinary mistakes I paid for out of my own pocket, and a stubborn habit of learning a thing properly rather than pretending I already had.

No shop pays me and no brand pays me. There are no sponsors in these pages and no affiliate links in them, and that is the whole reason this book can tell you the honest answer on a purchase is to buy nothing at all, or that the thing being recommended to you at the counter is worth a third of what it costs. Nobody writes those sentences with a sponsor to keep happy.

Thomas Hadley
Springfield, Missouri · The Ozarks
Watch the channel
V.
Order the Manual

$47 once. No subscription. Yours forever.

In your inbox within 60 seconds of payment. Read it on a phone, a tablet or a computer, or print the pages you want to keep in the truck. 7-day money-back guarantee, no questions asked — if it isn't for you, reply to the receipt and the $47 goes back the same day.

Instant, digital

A PDF, emailed inside a minute. No shipping, no app, no login, nothing to wait for.

7 days, every dollar

Read it, take it to a shop, run the checks. Not for you? One email and the money comes back. Keep the file.

Updates free, forever

Prices move and models get discontinued. Every future edition is yours at no extra charge.

The Gun Buyer's Manual by Thomas Hadley, first edition cover
Digital manual · First edition · MMXXVI

The Gun Buyer's Manual

Seventy chapters: what you're actually buying, where the money goes, how to read a used gun, the transaction itself, what ownership costs, and how to check your own state's law rather than trust a table. Read the parts that apply to you and skip the ones that don't.

$47 One payment · yours forever
What you get for $47
Get the manual · $47
🔒 Secure checkout · Visa · Mastercard · PayPal · Apple Pay · 7-day refund
VI.
FAQ

Questions buyers ask before they click.

Last Call

Know the price before he tells you.

$47 once. Instant access. 7-day money-back guarantee. Most buyers clear the $47 on their very next trip to a counter, and then keep clearing it on every purchase after.

Get the manual · $47
The Gun Buyer's Manual
$47
Get the manual