Dreaming about
guns

Guns are rare in most people's daily lives and everywhere on their screens, so it's no surprise they turn up in plenty of dreams. Dreaming about guns usually points to anger, to feeling threatened, or to a struggle over power and control. It doesn't predict violence, and it doesn't mean you're secretly dangerous, whatever the dream felt like.

The single most useful question is who had the gun. Holding it yourself, to defend someone or to threaten them, is a dream about your own anger or your own need to protect. Having it pointed at you is about feeling powerless. And if you watched a thriller or played a shooting game the night before, the dream may simply be your evening replayed, since dreams draw heavily on what we've just seen and done.^[1]

What dreaming about guns means

A gun is power at a distance. It lets one person decide the outcome without coming close, and it settles things in a second that can't be undone. Most gun dreams lean on one of those facts.

Anger you're holding

A gun is about the most solid picture of anger a dream can find, so if you held or fired one in your dream, look at who or what you're angry with, especially if it's anger you haven't been allowed to show. People who are calm and polite by day sometimes have the most violent dreams, because the dream is where the anger they swallow finally gets out.

Feeling threatened or powerless

But a gun pointed at you is the clearest picture of being at someone else's mercy. It tends to come when someone has power over you (a boss, a landlord, an ex, a debt collector) and you feel you can't fight back. One theory of dreaming says threatening dreams are the brain rehearsing danger so we cope better when it's real,^[2] and a gun is about as direct a threat as a dream can make.

Control and decisions

English is full of guns for decisions. People "pull the trigger" on a big choice, "jump the gun" when they act too soon and "stick to their guns" when they refuse to back down. A gun dream can be about a decision you're about to make, or one you made too fast. If you had the gun and didn't use it, you may be holding back from a move you know you'll have to make.

Dreaming about someone pointing a gun at you

Being held at gunpoint is about feeling cornered, with no way out that doesn't go through the other person. Did you know who was holding the gun? If you did, the dream may be about how much power they have over you, or how threatened you feel in a conflict with them. If you didn't, it can be a general pressure, like a deadline, a diagnosis or a situation where the stakes feel life-or-death. Talking your way out of it, or the gun turning out to be fake, suggests you feel you'll manage.

Dreaming about being shot

Being shot is the moment the threat in the dream actually lands on you. It often comes after a hurtful remark, a rejection or bad news, a blow you didn't see coming. Where you were hit can matter, since a wound to the chest can be about the heart and a wound in the back about betrayal. Surviving it points to resilience you might not credit yourself with. The shooting page covers the act itself in more detail.

Dreaming about shooting someone

Shooting someone in a dream can leave you shaken for the whole morning, and yet it almost never means you want to harm a real person. What it tends to carry is anger you haven't expressed, or to wanting to end something (a relationship, a job, a habit) quickly and for good. The person you shot is worth thinking about, and so is what they represent to you. If it was a stranger, it may be a part of yourself you'd like to get rid of, which is close to what killing someone means in dreams.

Dreaming about a gun that won't fire

A gun that jams, a trigger that won't move or bullets that drop out of the barrel is one of the most familiar gun dreams there is. It's a dream of frustration, of being unable to defend yourself or act when it counts. It often comes in conflicts where your words seem to have no effect, or when you feel your efforts keep falling short. If the gun turned into something useless, like a toy or a banana, the dream may be telling you that force isn't the tool for this problem.

Dreaming about holding or finding a gun

Holding a gun without using it is about power you have and haven't decided what to do with. Finding one, in a drawer or a bag, often points to discovering a capacity for anger or strength you didn't know you had. Playwrights have an old rule, credited to Anton Chekhov, that a gun shown in the first act must go off by the last, and a dream gun that's never fired is tension in the same state, waiting to be released. If you felt safer once the gun was in your hand, think about where in life you feel you need protecting, and from whom.

Dreaming about hiding a gun

Hiding a gun is about keeping a feeling or an intention out of sight, usually anger you don't think you're allowed to have. It can also be about a secret in your family or relationship that feels dangerous, the kind everyone knows is there and nobody mentions. Were you afraid of the gun being found, or of what you'd do with it? The first points to shame, the second to a temper you're working hard to keep down.

Dreaming about guns according to Jung and Freud

Guns came late to the dream literature, so what follows is each man's ideas turned toward one.

Jung: the polite face and the gun

Jung's persona is the polite, reasonable face you show other people, and his shadow is what that face has no room for.^[3] Applied to a gun, it's force with no apology, the one thing a very polite face would never carry in daylight. The stranger holding the gun is a classic shadow figure, a pursuer or intruder of your own sex who carries what you won't admit to. When you hold it yourself, the anger is yours to carry. And a gun that won't fire fits the person who has never been allowed to use it.

Freud: the long weapon and the day before

Freud listed long sharp weapons, knives and daggers, among the symbols of the male body.^[4] Guns aren't named, so a sexual reading is his list stretched, and a gun dream rarely needs it. His method starts elsewhere, with the thriller or the shooting in the news from the day before, and then with the wish. What would you like settled quickly, from a distance, with no chance of an answer back?

Questions to ask about your gun dream

Who held the gun and what happened next shape the whole meaning, so start there.

• Who had the gun, you or someone else?
• Was it fired, and did it work?
• Who were you protecting, or threatening, or running from?
• Who has the upper hand over you at the moment?
• What are you angry about that you haven't said?

Before it reads your dream, Oniri asks who was there and what your week has been like. A gun aimed at you by your boss and a gun you hid from your kids are very different dreams. If gun nightmares keep breaking up your sleep, try these ways to have fewer nightmares, and mention them to your doctor.