What are gun dreams about?

You can gain insight from thinking about any dream, no matter how strange. Only you, as the dreamer, have final say on what your dream may or may not mean. Each dream is unique.

The DreamWell dictionary provides information on how each dream symbol appears in dreams in general. Finding how experience guns in dreams can be a key to understanding its meaning.

Our emotions in dreams can help us understand its meaning. Pay attention to how you felt in the dream. Pay attention to how you feel about guns in dreams. See how you feel about guns now, in your waking life.

Guns are so prevalent in media and society that the possibilities for symbolism are almost endless, especially when you factor in personal associations. Dreams begin with an association and create symbolism with it, and guns have many associations: self-defense, coercion, conflict, hostility, aim, targeting. We’ll discuss these and more, and give you the tools you need to figure out what a gun in your dreams means.

As with all dream symbolism, a gun is understood within the context of the dream-story. Is it pointed at you, or do you point it? Is it fired? Is anyone hurt? Is it loaded? These details carry different connotations.

A primary association with guns is linked with self-defense, so if you point or use a gun to defend yourself in a dream it might symbolize defending yourself in some other way: from personal attacks, from intrusion, from hostility. It might be a sign that you need to stick up for yourself—probably not with a gun, but in some way to defend your boundaries or appropriately express your anger.

Or perhaps you’re being defensive. Something feels threatening, including intangible threats such as to your reputation. You don’t want to realize or admit something, or are resisting a change. Instead you act hostile, you resist, you threaten. A gun in this context means “defensive” or “resistant.”

A gun can symbolize feeling pressured, coerced, or forced. You are “under the gun.” The symbolism is created by how guns are used to force people to do things they don’t want to.

Along these lines, consider that using a gun in a dream can symbolize taking the easy way out. Rather than talk through a conflict or take time to persuade, you pull a gun in the figurative sense and impose your will. That sort of scenario is portrayed all the time in television and movies. The person holding the gun says, “Do this or else,” and the person on the other end doesn’t really have a choice. It’s “do or die.”

Gun are used to point, and pointing can be a way of indicating guilt, blame, or responsibility. It says, “That’s who did it.”

On the other hand, aiming a gun can symbolize focus, such as focus of attention or concentration. When you aim a gun, you focus on a target. A target in a dream can symbolize anything you aim for or target in your life, such as a goal or ambition. For example, targeting a romantic interest with your attention can be symbolized as seeing that person in your gun sights. See: Arrows, Bullets

Your feelings can tell you the difference. There’s a big difference between pointing a gun in anger or with hostility, and pointing one to symbolize targeting a romantic interest.

Aiming or firing at a moving target can mean you’re trying to hit a proverbial moving target! The metaphor is obvious when you step back and look at it.

If a gun is fired at you it can symbolize verbal or personal attacks. A fired gun is loud and can symbolize loud arguments, confrontations, and heated words. If you fire a gun, it can symbolize that you are being loud or angry, or taking “verbal shots.” The key to the symbolism is the loud noise and the feeling of confrontation. See: Bullets

Firing a gun can be a raw expression of anger. See: Anger

Situations that get out of hand can involve guns, so in dreams guns can be used to create a scenario where things get out of hand and use it to connect with something in your life that’s out of hand and potentially dangerous.

A gun in a dream can indicate paranoia or delusion, connected with the association that some people who carry guns are paranoid or delusional.

Guns can symbolize egotism and machismo. Put a gun in someone’s hand and watch the worst in the person come out. See a false sense of confidence and authority emerge. If you observe such behavior in yourself or someone you know, you can dream about it as being careless or overconfident with a gun.

A gun with a hair trigger, which fires or threatens to fire at the slightest touch, can symbolize a temper set off by small provocations. Even people who don’t normally show a lot of temper can have times when stress, pressure, and anxiety make them feel like they could “go off.” Have you lost your temper lately, or do you feel the pressure building?

A hair trigger, or a gun that fires on its own, can symbolize premature ejaculation. Guns have many other phallic associations. A bullet penetrates. A barrel is long, straight, and hard. Guns are symbols of machismo. They shoot.

Feeling threatened by a gun pointed at you can symbolize feeling threatened by someone’s sexual advances.

Loading a gun in a dream can mean you are preparing for a confrontation. It might be a warning to be careful of getting carried away with emotions, especially anger. It can symbolize thinking of the points you will make during an argument or talk. Ammunition is used in this sense to mean preparation. On the other hand, if you have no ammunition it can mean you aren’t prepared, or don’t have good points to make during an argument. See: Ammunition

If you try to fire a gun and it jams or misfires, it can mean you aren’t able to express your anger. You have trouble expressing anger—you hold it in rather than let it out—or fear what might happen if you do express it.

A jammed gun can connect with a feeling of powerlessness.

If a gun is pointed at you and you try to block it or take it away, it can mean you are worried about being targeted. You feel threatened. Or you want to deflect blame or responsibility.

The symbolism of guns can get especially deep and varied for people who carry one as part of their job, or have used guns in combat. For example, a gun in the dream of a police officer might symbolize thoughts and feelings related to the possibility of having to use it. It could be used to symbolize other aspects of the job or the person’s career. For example, dreaming of having no bullets could symbolize feeling unqualified or unable to advance in the job. Dreaming of not having the strength to pull the trigger can refer to the guts it takes to actually pull the trigger and kill another human being, or reluctance to do so.

(On that note, inability to pull the trigger can symbolize inability to make a decision or move forward with something, to pull the trigger in the figurative sense.)

Anyone who has been involved in a shooting incident can dream about it for many years afterward. The fear, anger, anxiety, and other related emotions are processed in dreams, and psychological distance from the experience(s) is created by dreaming about it. Such an experience can become synonymous with those emotions, so that anytime they’re experienced for any reason, a dream can use the original incident to compare with something presently going on in your life. In such dreams the assailant can be shot multiple times but not go down, or appears unharmed, symbolizing that no matter how a person tries to forget such an experience, it won’t go away.

The same imagery can symbolize someone or something that won’t go away, a problem that can’t be solved, a situation that won’t resolve, or a person who doesn’t get the message. Most dream characters represent something about yourself, so the first possibility to consider is a character you shoot in a dream represents something about yourself you want to change.

The same idea applies when you are the one shot. Being shot by a bad guy is a common theme in the dreams of people who are frustrated with themselves and can’t or won’t do anything about it.

A silenced gun in a dream can indicate you aren’t voicing your anger or feelings. Perhaps you need to be more vocal.

Shooting yourself with a gun can symbolize doing some sort of harm to yourself. For example, shooting yourself in the heart can symbolize having to break off a relationship with someone you love. Shooting yourself in the head can symbolize hating your thoughts. Shooting yourself can express the feeling that you want to give up, figuratively or literally.

Shooting yourself, or being shot, in certain parts of the body can show where you’re hurt or wounded physically, emotionally, or psychologically. See: Amputation, Body parts, Suicide

See also: Ammunition, Amputation, Anger, Armies, Arresting, Arrows, Body parts, Bullets, Death, Hats, Heads, Hearts, Police, Suicide, War, Wounds

This interpretation is from ""The Dream Interpretation Dictionary: Symbols, Signs, and Meanings" and is provided by J.M. DeBord aka "RadOwl". He is the author of several acclaimed books about dreaming, the host of The Dreams That Shape Us podcast, and is a moderator of r/Dreams, one of the largest dream sharing communities on the internet.