What's in other people's minds is rarely surprising or original or particularly well concealed, especially for someone who is well read, experienced and widely travelled. 

This is especially true when we're talking about Americans and guns, in which case the script was written long ago, and reinforced countless times by cinematic reiterations of heroic gun fighters in a thousand ridiculous guises.

What IS surprising is that, after all these years, and all the studies of our national mythology, those same people lack the self-knowledge to realize how very peculiar and self-defeating that script actually is.