It took me almost my entire life to "get" this line.

Cafe Society
1

I was born in 1945. The following year, *Annie Get Your Gun *opened on Broadway. As far back as I remember, my father had a record of that show. When I got older, I bought an LP, and then CDs of four different productions. I have the songs downloaded into iTunes and also in my iPod.

One of the songs is “You Can’t Get a Man with a Gun.” The first line in the song is:

“Oh, my mother was frightened by a shotgun, they say.”

It never occurred to me that “shotgun” referred to a shotgun wedding, and if a woman is “frightened by a shotgun,” it means she thinks she’s pregnant, and has to get married (at least by 1946 standards she had to). It took me all these years to figure this out.

2

It was (and still is in some circles) commonly believed that a strong emotion felt by a pregnant woman could permanently “mark” the unborn child, either physically or emotionally.

Examples: "mother was frightened by a" -shotgun - Google Search

So saying “mother was frightened by a shotgun” is a way of explaining that guns have been part of who she is since the beginning.

3

A friend recently explained to me what I thought was a throw-away line from Aerosmith’s “Sweet Emotion” - “You can’t catch me cause the rabbit done died”.

Seems it’s been covered by the Master too:

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1239/in-old-time-pregnancy-tests-did-the-rabbit-really-die

Areosmith’s line still doesn’t make much sense, though.