Guns, Violence, and the Fragile Myth of Freedom: A Deep Dive into Fear, Dignity, and Kindness
- Shane Warren
- Sep 11
- 6 min read
This isn’t going to be a polite blog. It’s long, reflective, and at times uncomfortable, because the world doesn’t need another shallow “guns are bad” statement. We know that guns kill. We know the statistics. In the United States alone, 48,830 firearm-related deaths were recorded in 2021 the highest ever on record, and more than 130 deaths every single day.1
What fascinates me and frankly disturbs me, is not whether guns are deadly. That is obvious. The real question is: why are guns clutched so tightly in the American psyche? Why, even after classrooms are turned into morgues, does the national conversation erupt in rage instead of reason? Why do so many cling to the “right to bear arms” as if it is the last thread of dignity they have left?
Fear, Entitlement, and the Myth of the Frontier
To understand this attachment, we must first recognise in societies like America that guns are not simply weapons, they are symbols. They are woven into a mythology that celebrates the rugged pioneer, the self-reliant settler carving a life out of wilderness, the cowboy standing alone against danger. The gun, in this imagination, is shorthand for autonomy, survival, and the right to control one’s destiny.
But here’s the psychological twist. In primary emotion theory, anger is never the true starting point. It is the mask that covers more vulnerable emotions: fear, grief, or shame.2 So with this in mind, I would assert, that when Americans erupt in fury at the suggestion of gun reform, the rage is not really about calibres and cartridges. It is about fear. Fear of losing power. Fear of irrelevance. Fear of being unseen, disrespected, and humiliated.
Resilience psychology frames this as a secondary survival response. The “fight” mode is activated when people sense their rights are being stripped away.3 What feels under threat is not the object, the firearm itself, but the dignity and identity attached to it. Guns become the lightning rod for anxieties about autonomy, control, and worth. To touch them is to poke at the psychological bedrock of who many believe themselves to be.
What the Rest of the World Shows
This intensity becomes even more puzzling when compared to other democracies that have faced the same challenge and responded differently. In 1996, after the Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania, Australia introduced sweeping reforms under Prime Minister John Howard, lead by deputy Prime Minster Tim Fischer. A massive buyback was launched, semi-automatic weapons were banned, and licensing requirements were tightened. Within a decade, firearm homicides had dropped by nearly 60 per cent and suicides by almost two-thirds. No mass shooting of comparable scale has occurred in Australia since.4
In 2019, New Zealand faced its own moment of reckoning after the Christchurch mosque attacks. Within weeks, most semi-automatic weapons were banned. Compliance was high, and the move was seen not as an attack on citizens but as a moral response of solidarity with victims.5
The United Kingdom provides another striking case. After the Dunblane school massacre in 1996, handguns were effectively banned the following year. Today, firearm deaths in the UK remain among the lowest in the world, around 0.04 per 100,000 people, compared to the United States’ 12 per 100,000.6
These nations did not collapse into tyranny. Civil liberties were not annihilated. People simply adapted. What changed was the availability of instruments designed to kill quickly and efficiently. The fact that America refuses to acknowledge these models suggests that its attachment to guns runs deeper than policy; it affirms the premise that this attachment runs into the psychology of identity and dignity.
Violence as Cultural Language
In America, guns are not only objects. They are the embodiment of a culture where violence itself has become a language. Consider the rhetoric: the “war” on drugs, the “fight” for freedom, the “battle” of ideas. Conflict is framed in combative terms. Struggle is valorised over compromise. Violence is not merely tolerated; it is normalised, romanticised, and in some quarters, celebrated.
Against this backdrop, the gun becomes more than a weapon. It becomes a psychological crutch. It reassures the owner: “I may not control much, but I control this.” When institutions feel untrustworthy, when politics disappoints, when jobs vanish and the future feels uncertain, the gun remains the symbol of autonomy. To ask Americans to surrender their firearms, then, is not just to adjust a law, it is to strip away the last illusion of control.
Guns as Symptom, Not Cause
This is where resilience psychology adds nuance. Guns are not the disease; they are the symptom. The rage of advocates, the resistance to evidence, the political paralysis in the face of mass shootings, these are not truly about firearms. They are about unhealed wounds.
Anger is the mask. Fear is the wound. The gun is the bandage.
People cling to guns not because they are statistically safer with them - in fact, gun ownership increases the risk of death in the home7 - but because psychologically, the weapon soothes the terror of being powerless. Remove the bandage, and the wound remains raw. This is why reforms that appear “common sense” are often perceived as humiliations: they are experienced as violations of dignity rather than enhancements of safety.
Dignity and the Sacredness of Rights
Philosopher Donna Hicks has argued that the need for dignity; to be seen, respected, and valued is universal and non-negotiable.8 When dignity is violated, the predictable response is anger, defensiveness, and conflict. Through this lens, the right to bear arms has become sacred in the American imagination precisely because it is tied to dignity. To lose it is to lose standing, to lose face, to lose value.
This explains why reforms that seem rational abroad provoke disproportionate fury in the United States. They are not experienced as policy adjustments but as existential threats. The debate collapses not because of weak arguments but because the real battle is not logical; it is emotional.
Kindness as Radical Resistance
So where does this leave us? Yes, tighter gun laws are essential. The evidence is overwhelming. But laws alone will not heal a culture that equates dignity with domination.
Here is where kindness enters, and not in a sentimental sense. In resilience psychology, kindness is radical. Violence is primal: strike before being struck. Kindness is evolved: transcend instinct, connect, empathise, protect. Where violence asserts, kindness inquires. Where violence isolates, kindness binds.
I often describe kindness as a superpower. When individuals feel acknowledged and respected, their compulsion to cling to weapons diminishes. The gun no longer needs to scream, “I matter”, because the person already feels seen. If guns are symbols of fear, kindness is the practice of safety. If violence is the language, kindness is the counter-language that rewrites the script.
Beyond Guns: Rewriting the Script of Violence
Which leads to the harder truth: banning guns, while necessary, is not sufficient. If the cultural reflex of violence remains intact, the impulse will manifest elsewhere - in knives, fists, cars, or words. The deeper challenge is to unlearn violence as a default script and replace it with resilience rooted in dignity and kindness.
This requires both legal reform and cultural reform. Policy must limit access to deadly weapons. But culture must teach that dignity is not defended through firepower but through empathy; that rights are not preserved through domination but through respect; that resilience is not about withstanding fear but about rising above it with connection.
A Rambled Conclusion
So yes, ban the assault rifles. Yes, close the loopholes. Do what every other Western democracy has proven can be done. But do not stop there. Because until we address the fear beneath the fury, the wound beneath the weapon, the violation of dignity beneath the violence, the cycle will continue.
Guns do not make us free. Violence does not make us safe. Anger does not make us strong. Kindness does. Dignity does. Connection does.
And if that sounds naïve, remember this: every time humanity has transcended its cycles of violence, it has not been through bigger weapons. It has been through bigger hearts.
My Rambles with Shane Warren — sometimes blunt, sometimes tender, always restless with the question: how do we build a world less defined by fear, and more defined by resilience, dignity, and kindness?
Reference Footnotes
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (2022). Firearm Mortality by State. National Center for Health Statistics. ↩
Izard, C. E. (1991). The Psychology of Emotions. Springer. ↩
Reivich, K., & Shatté, A. (2002). The Resilience Factor. Broadway Books. ↩
Chapman, S., Alpers, P., Agho, K., & Jones, M. (2006). Australia’s 1996 gun law reforms: Faster falls in firearm deaths, firearm suicides, and a decade without mass shootings. Injury Prevention, 12(6), 365–372. ↩
New Zealand Parliament (2019). Arms (Prohibited Firearms, Magazines, and Parts) Amendment Act. ↩
Small Arms Survey (2020). Global Firearm Deaths Data. Geneva: Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies. ↩
Kellermann, A. L., & Rivara, F. P. (1993). Gun ownership as a risk factor for homicide in the home. New England Journal of Medicine, 329(15), 1084–1091. ↩
Hicks, D. (2011). Dignity: Its Essential Role in Resolving Conflict. Yale University Press
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