Thoughts about gun scum

[Scrivener7]

4. Do not forget terror. These people are so fearful, it's amazing. Go into our own Gungeon

and read a few of the posts there. They shout their existential panic. A dozen guns aren't enough to protect them. They have to have gates and locks and guns and drills with their children to prepare for when their homes are attacked.

A REALLY wise DUer, nuxvomica, has the only explanation for this behavior that has ever made sense to me:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=17679568
We are supposed to transition from the innocence of youth through rites of passage to the awareness of corruption in the world and the commitment of our newfound adult powers to protecting the innocent from that corruption so the cycle can begin anew. If we pass the awareness stage without answering the call to heroism, either because we fear sacrifice or have no confidence in our powers, this broken instinct must be mitigated by fantasies in which we are pantomime heroes easily fighting the made-up corruptions invented by abusive parental figures who only acquire power by keeping their followers in a permanent twilight of childhood. This broken cycle has been the primary cause of human misery since the dawn of humankind, even though myth and literature, from Gilgamesh to Skywalker, keeps telling us how the whole thing is supposed to work.

Essentially, they are stuck in a phase of adolescence that they haven't successfully moved through. To feel brave and adult, they must fantasize about themselves being heroes and vanquishing enemies they have invented in their minds. Those thoughts of the dangers of invented enemies are encouraged by people who benefit from keeping them in this limbo of childish fantasy.