I think Terry Pratchett may have touched on an aspect of it when he suggested that the presence of the gun (otherwise named in his novel) could prey on your mind in an almost magical way. Perhaps for some people there's something about becoming Jupiter and throwing lightning around thats a terrible temptation. If so, I'd expect the same temptation to afflict people who like becoming Jupiter and threatening the world--but if so it gets beaten out of them very quickly because brandishers and threateners aren't part of daily life, except maybe in the big cities. Where, perhaps not coincidentally, there's more support for gun control.
Some people recognize a gun as a tool to make suicide easy, and fear that because of their own inner struggles. That gets my respect.
Perhaps the gun is a reminder that the world is a lot more dangerous than you want to believe, and that makes you afraid? I don't think this fits all of the people I know--it's not a very flattering hypothesis. When I've seen someone carrying, I wondered what they knew that I didn't. But then, I have a fairly good opinion of my own judgment about risk. If I didn't, I might worry more.
If we use the "moral foundations" framework, where does civilian gun carry fit? Look at it from the point of view that you're the person who isn't carrying.
- Care/Harm: The gun is a tool for harming (or plinking/hunting/etc but pretend with me here)
- Fairness/Cheating: If you believe the state/police should take care of everything, a gun is cheating.
- Loyalty/Betrayal: Not obviously relevant. Perhaps the owner plans to protect herself against betrayal, but that doesn't have much to do with this point of view
- Authority/Subversion: If you believe the state/police will take care of everything, a gun is subversive
- Sanctity/Degradation: Not obviously relevant, though perhaps a gun, as a harming tool, is out of place in a holy area--if interpreted very broadly.
- Liberty/Oppression: Not obviously relevant--from the point of view of the non-carrier.
So guns do tick a few boxes that relate to gut political attitudes.
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One of the oddest things was some of the reactions immediately after 9/11, when the idea of arming airline pilots was first muted.
It seemed that many commentators were more worried about the pilots being armed... one TV personality said that it would make her “nervous” to know that the pilot of her plane was carrying a gun...than about terrorists taking over the plane and flying it into a building.
Apparently, to many people a “gun” is an icon of such negative power that context cannot be considered. This is not thought at all; this is reaction at a stimulus-response level. But depressingly common.
The thing that struck me as odd about being nervous about pilots being armed was that the pilot has my life in his hands. Should a pilot wish me harm, he doesn't need a gun -- as the events of 9/11 made clear.
Echoing the point, I recall an opinion piece in the Concord Monitor in the 80s in which the writer described being at a friends house and handling a gun for the first time, feeling quite overwhelmed at the possibility for harming others he held in his hand. I could very quickly kill someone with this, he thought uneasily. I was mostly apolitical in those years, but residually liberal from my younger days. I was now working with people who hunted or otherwise used guns and spoke comfortably about them, but that essay was one of the watershed moments for me in going from being uncomfortable around firearms and vaguely gun-controlling to believing that I had this all wrong. Well yeah, but that's true of driving your car, shoving people in front of moving vehicles, setting fires, or a bunch of other things, buddy. Get a grip.
Male suicide is affected by gun availability, and though it does not add up to many people, it is the one thing I can think of that slants toward limiting gun rights. Yet it has another side, as one of my patients pointed out. "I live in the most dangerous part of town because I haven't got much income, but I'm not legally allowed to own a gun! And they think I'm crazy?" Much better in practice to intervene only at points of danger. If someone is suicidal, restrict their access to whatever their preferred method is. Hold the car keys, lock up the medicines, have an uncle hold the guns at his house for a month or two.
-Guns remind of the existence of danger/evil. Some people don't want to be reminded.
-Some people expect to be protected by someone else. Guns in the hands of non-authority-figures offend this expectation.
-Some people trust the govt and distrust their fellow citizens. Leftists seem to be especially distrusting of their fellow citizens.
-Psychological projection. I wouldn't trust myself with a weapon - why would I trust you?
-Some people greatly overestimate the risks of gun possession. A corollary is the underestimation of non-gun risks such as those caused by motor vehicles. We tend to discount the familiar and emphasize the unfamiliar.
To some degree it's the same thing driving the literary convention called "Chekhov's Gun." Any introduction of a gun into the drama, no matter how small, implies that the gun will be fired by the last act.
Real life doesn't work that way, but human beings tend to construct dramatic stories about their lives, and this convention is so well-known because it is so completely obeyed by storytellers. Seeing a gun, then, implies that violence is being foreshadowed; that it is forthcoming.
For those of us who live with guns, of course, sheer repetition proves that this dramatic tension is not a real feature of reality. I first saw a gun in my father's closet; he lived and died and never fired it as far as I know. I have that gun in my safe now, and I'm not going to fire it either because it's a cheap piece of crap from postwar Germany that might explode in my hand. I have a gun that belonged to my great-great grandfather, and another that belonged to my grandfather; whole generations have passed without them harming anything other than the occasional squirrel for Brunswick stew.
I have other guns I see or handle more-or-less daily, none of which have been fired recently (due to the expense of ammo more than anything else; it's fun to shoot for practice, and to keep in shape as a marksman). They never cause any trouble, but they're available in case trouble should appear from other directions.
Still, I suspect it is chiefly the literary and dramatic conventions. Those who never encounter the things have only those dramas to fall back on, mentally, and that is how the story always plays out in the dramas.
Here's a fun piece on that topic:
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/literary-gun-devices-chekhovs-and-otherwise
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