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Let me try to make the legal distinction between doing something on a someone's behalf and making a gift more clear.
[1] Say my wife and I are sitting around at home one day. I say to her, "I'd sure like a Coke. Would you mind running down to the store and picking me up a six-pack."
Then she says, "Sure, I don't mind at all."
She then goes out to the store and comes back a bit later with a six-pack of Coca-Cola.
[2] On another day, I'm sitting at home. My wife went out a bit earlier to pick up the dry cleaning.
She gets back and plops a six-pack of Coca-Cola on the table, saying, "I brought you a present."
There is a legal distinction between those two situations.
In the first, she is buying the Coke at my direction or request. She is, in legal terms, acting as my agent to buy the Coke on my behalf. When she bought the Coke she did so to fulfill my purpose and to further my explicit interest. I wanted the Coke, said so, and she went and got it for me.
In the second, she has acted on her own initiative to buy me a present. When she bought the Coke, she did so on her behalf to fulfill her purpose. She wanted to do something nice for me, unbidden by me, and purely as an act of generosity on her part.
Of course none of this matters, really, when talking about buying a soft drink.
But it matters a great deal if we're talking about guns.
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