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Rose: Doctor, they've got guns.
The Doctor: And I don't. And that makes me the better person, don't you think? [insufferably cheerful] They can shoot me dead, but the moral high ground is mine!

There are lots of reasons that some people hate guns, but in the real world, these are most often linked to hating the thing that people with guns can easily do, which is turning living people into non-living people. But in fiction, the gun-hater's reasons are often different. He just specifically dislikes guns. He has no problem whatsoever with other, less efficient (and sometimes, more efficient) means of turning living people into non-living people.

Sometimes there's a specific reason that their distaste is limited to the gun, such as a particular incident from his past or a sense that guns are "unsportsmanlike" or "cowardly". Some characters will even take a Heroic Vow against the use of guns. But most of the time, there's just a Writer on Board who wants to show that a character is moral enough to hate overt tools of violence like guns while glossing over the fact that they're in a show where a lot of violence has to be unloaded on people. Pressure to reduce violence with firearms in media in general, or the desire of an anti-gun author to teach us all An Aesop may also play a part.

While other forms of lethal violence will still be lethal, they translate less literally to Real Life, since it's less probable anyone in the audience could successfully dish out pain the way the hero does. Not everyone is a master martial artist who can kill with their bare hands, but anyone with a functioning couple of fingers could conceivably pull a trigger and get lucky. This also allows the story to be more action-oriented and dramatic when guns could end the tension much quicker. (BANG! — "ooh, ya got me!")

Of course, a refusal to use guns doesn't automatically mean antipathy towards them—most superpowered beings don't use guns, because frankly they don't need them. Why bother with a gun when you can already shoot stuff out of your hands, eyes, and/or mouth? Or when you're faster than a literal speeding bullet, you might as well just run up to the other guy and punch him in the face since it would take less time than shooting him. For those without superpowers, a gun may simply be the wrong tool for the job — a master assassin who prides themselves in quiet, clean kills which leave no trace of their existence may find a loud, conspicuous, shell-ejecting firearm to be of no use.

This can also be an excuse for the hero to MacGyver up some Bamboo Technology rather than just shooting the bad guy. Remember, MacGyver himself may normally refuse to use guns, but even he's not above firing a steering wheel knob out of a cannon, as long as he made the cannon out of a car muffler with his own hands.

In some cases, the setting can also play a part in the Hero(es) refusal to associate with firearms. For example, if the setting takes place in a big, crime-infested city where the only two kinds of people with guns are police officers or the crooks they're chasing, anyone packing heat may run the risk of being mistaken for one of the two mentioned groups by someone else — or by a cop or crook themselves. Protagonists in these settings would therefore be very leery of any sort of gun or person carrying one, as it usually means trouble is not far behind.

It's common for the Blood Knight to not like guns, primarily because he loves fighting, and guns make fights end more quickly, which means less fun for him. He might also think guns are for cowards who are too chicken to fight up close and personal. See Technical Pacifist as well, where, even if a Technical Pacifist still beats the crap out of people on a heartbeat, he will generally not use a gun. Related to Heroes Fight Barehanded.

This is not necessarily a Heroic Trope, and a character hating guns does not mean they follow a Thou Shall Not Kill philosophy.

Sometimes brought on by Executive Meddling or by the Media Watchdogs stooping over the cartoons, and may forgo replacing guns by removing them altogether.

If used in an anvilicious manner, the trope may veer into lawful stupid when the protagonist foregoes the use of guns, and misses opportunities to stop evil.

A Super-Trope to Con Men Hate Guns. Often overlaps with Firearms Are Cowardly.

Contrast Gun Nut, Superhero Packing Heat, Batman Grabs a Gun.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 
  • Roger Smith from The Big O, which isn't much of a surprise since he's anime Batman. Though his reason is because it's not "gentleman"-like. He will use it if pressured, but won't directly attack people. And he's just fine with using the guns on his mecha. Again, just like Batman has no problem arming his vehicles with enough guns and explosives to take out a small country.
  • Black Lagoon:
    • Shenhua doesn't use guns. Not that she has any personal opposition to killing—she's just more fond of knives.
    • Also Rock — having grown up in Japan where private ownership of firearms is practically unheard of, he naturally has no experience, nor love for them, when the series starts out. As things wear on, however, he becomes less opposed to them, but comes to the conclusion that his weapon of choice is words rather than guns. In the yakuza arc, he refuses the pistol Balalaika offers him as a souvenir, after she kills several former allies with it on his more or less indirect suggestion, but says he "won't forget that he pulled the trigger". Of course, if there's any shooting to be done, Revy's happy to do it for him.
  • In Cat's Eye, policeman Utsumi never uses a gun. The reason, as revealed later, is that he's actually a crack shot, but that caused him to become overconfident and do gun tricks at the shooting range; one of those tricks went awry, and he shot himself in the leg, causing him to start disliking firearms.
  • Death Note:
    • Aiber hates guns, and violence in general. But then, he is a con man. Interestingly, he is very skilled with a firearm, as he demonstrates when he reluctantly picks one up chasing Higuchi. We're only told that he dislikes guns for personal reasons, and those reasons are never elaborated on.
    • Light and his father both staunchly refuse to accept guns offered to them for their personal safety because they are civilians, and it is illegal in Japan for civilians to carry a firearm. They seem to take a national pride in following this rule.
  • Fullmetal Alchemist:
    • In the manga, Ed says that he doesn't like guns and freaks out when he has to use one; this is consistent with his refusal to kill anyone throughout the series.
    • Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) handles this differently, as while Ed starts the series with the same attitude, it gradually abates as subsequent events take a toll on his innocence. In the latter parts of the anime he starts using firearms in fights (at one point he even transmuted a machine gun onto his automail arm), and by the time of the Movie he keeps a pistol stashed in his belongings. He's a lousy shot however, and still prefers to use his fists over guns.
    • Inverted with Riza Hawkeye, who says she prefers guns to swords and knives because with guns, "The sense of death doesn't linger on the hands." But as Roy says, she isn't being truthful. Snipers kill in a very personal way, even if they aren't physically close to their victims.
  • Yajiro Kojima from Grenadier uses a sword instead of guns because he thinks a person who kills with a gun doesn't feel the weight of the life he or she takes. Traveling with Rushuna makes him rethink that point, though.
  • Kimba from Kimba the White Lion due to the deaths (including his father) guns cause in his animal kingdom.
  • Master Asia from Mobile Fighter G Gundam is a mecha example of this trope, always insisting to fight bare-handed and considers all guns as for cheaters in a fight. The backstory for the anime also revealed that most martial artists were quite pissed off at the inclusion of guns because Gentle Chapman of Neo-England won three straight Gundam Fights just by sniping them. It was Master Asia's win that saved the fights.
  • In End of Evangelion, after Shigeru Aoba hands Maya Ibuki a gun, she expresses dislike of using guns and killing human beings even as NERV is being invaded by SDF.
    Shigeru Aoba: [hands Ibuki a gun] Release the safety.
    Maya Ibuki: I can't! I just can't shoot this thing, Aoba!
    Shigeru Aoba: Of course you can! You've had basic training!
    Maya Ibuki: But I shot at targets, not at other human beings!
    Shigeru Aoba: Idiot! You kill or you die!
  • Played around with in Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt — while Panty is rather trigger-happy, that's with her magic panties * that turn into a Heaven gun. On the one occasion she's forced to use normal guns, she complains about how bad the used gunpowder smells.
  • Justified in Puella Magi Kazumi Magica with Niko Kanna due to her Dark and Troubled Past: as a child, while playing with a gun she had somehow gotten her hands on, she accidentally shot and killed two friends. When forced to use a gun to defend herself, she remarks "Can't run away from guns, can I?"
  • Several characters in Rurouni Kenshin. At one point, Yahiko snatches a gun away from a mook. The mook panics, but Yahiko throws it away and says, "Like I would really shoot. I'm a swordsman, guns are for sissies!"
  • In SHWD, Sawada refuses to arm herself with a gun against the Dynamis and doesn't team up with anyone who uses guns, meaning that, until Koga showed up, she had been fighting alone. She manages to fight the Dynamis with knives instead. Leone points out to Koga that Sawada has a couple of scars that look like bullet wounds, suggesting she had a traumatic experience with guns in the past.
  • Slayers:
    • Prince Philionel and his daughters Naga and Amelia, who Don't Like Swords, and as such are mostly Technical Pacifist martial artists.
    • Then there's the otherwise boisterous Naga, who's so Afraid of Blood she faints at the sight of it owing to the trauma of witnessing her mother's assassination but is perfectly happy to freeze people solid and crush them with golems.
  • Strike Witches: Upon joining the 501st JFW, Yoshika is quick to return the handgun she is issued, insisting that she won't need it, but it is more likely because that gun would be way too puny compared to her 13mm machine gun used in battle.

    Audio Plays 

    Comic Books 
  • Barbara Gordon doesn't like guns, which makes sense since she was shot by The Joker and was left paralyzed from the waist down in The Killing Joke. This event remains in her backstory post-Flashpoint, and it's left its mark on her, as seen in her current series. One of her first attempts to get back into the swing of things as Batgirl (her paralysis was treated with surgery overseas) goes poorly when Mirror pulls a gun on her (aiming at the exact same spot where the Joker shot her) and she freezes in fear.
    • There is a point in Batman: No Man's Land where she prepares to kill Black Mask with a sniper rifle to prevent him from attacking her clock tower, but Barbara's sometimes portrayed as more pragmatic than other members of the bat family.
    • In Gotham Adventures, a tie-in comic to the animated series, Barbara has no aversion to guns, given her police training and the lack of any event analogous to The Killing Joke; she simply doesn't use them as Batgirl to respect Batman's wishes. However, when the time comes to infiltrate the home base of the Sensei, one of the world's most lethal martial artists and the leader of the League of Assassins, she makes a point of holding onto a pistol. Batman isn't happy with this decision, but ultimately does nothing to stop her besides arguing.
  • Batman:
    • Batman's hatred of the gun is well known, so much that he will refuse to use a firearm even if it seems to be the only way out of a deadly situation. This is carried over into the DC Animated Universe as well, possibly best shown in Batman Beyond when what finally pushed Batman to retire is that he was forced to use a gun to threaten a kidnapper who was about to bash in his skull after he had been crippled by a bad heart attack during the fight.
    • One Nightwing comic book (Volume 2, Issue 33) features a flashback with Batman and Robin on the firing range in the Batcave. Robin is surprised when Batman hands him a gun:
      Robin: I thought you hated guns.
      Batman: But I don't fear them. There's a big difference. They're used against us so often we need to know them, respect them. You need to know how they work. To know even more than the punks who rely on them.
    • Robin III (Tim Drake), likewise, gives this same explanation after a special ops member mentions while he beat her in a sparring match, she'd have an edge on the firing range. He also adds that part of the reason they don't use guns is, unlike police, they can't appear in court to defend the use of lethal force, so they don't use tools (like guns) that would result in deaths. After Dick became a Bludhaven police officer, Bruce made it clear that he didn't like him wearing his service revolver around the cave.
    • Final Crisis takes this to a symbolical level as Batman makes an "once in a lifetime" exception and shoots "poisons" Darkseid with an anti-New God gun only to be "killed" by the villain's eye beams a mere second after pulling the trigger. Much to the chagrin of fans, though it should be noted that Batman was going for a what could be a suicide run (as this was the "Day That Evil Won" and was most likely the last thing he could have done being trapped in Command-D) and of all places, Batman shot Darkseid in the shoulder. With a bullet that was, as he himself pointed out, like Kryptonite to Darkseid's kind. All that means is that instead of dying instantly Darkseid's body took a few moments to savour the poisonous effects.
    • In another Batman story by Grant Morrison, Joe Chill in Hell, a young Batman confronts his parents' killer, Joe Chill, and torments the man, depriving him of sleep, sneaking up on him in disguise, and generally just scaring the crap out of him for a month, all building up to the point where Batman drives Chill to commit suicide.
    • It's amazing how strict some Batman adaptations are about this, even when you'd think they'd ditch it. In The Dark Knight Returns, Batman hospitalizes countless mooks, snaps the Joker's spine (paralyzing but not killing him), and even has machine guns on his car. When he uses the guns, he internal monologues to the reader, "Rubber Bullets. Honest."
      • Except in that same comic, Batman uses a captured M60 on one of the Mutants terrorizing the city. Though, to his credit, he only fired around, not directly at the mutant.
    • The reasons vary from writer to writer. Originally, the idea that Batman hates guns was linked to his parents' murder when he was a child. There are practical and legal reasons, too — self-awareness that he's a vigilante and the knowledge that in being so he has no business killing, while guns make it much too easy to kill and much too hard to be nonlethal. On a historical note, in his original Detective Comic appearances, he frequently used firearms and lethal force against villains. The creators only removed his use of firearms when they worried that it would make him resemble the Shadow too closely. Today, most depictions have Batman bending enough to arm his vehicles, for disabling vehicles and removing obstacles of course.
    • In a particularly amusing inversion, in an early Detective Comics appearance Bats comments that he hates taking human life — immediately before machine-gunning a car full of baddies from his biplane. This blog has a good rundown on instances where he used a gun.
    • While Batman's aversion to guns has generally grown over time, there are some situations in the older comics where Batman refuses to use a gun. In Detective 453 (the same series in which Batman fires a machine gun into a car full of bad guys), Batman is told to shoot a single bullet into the ground to prove he isn't really Batman, or be shot to death by a room full of criminals. He doesn't do it. This is probably due more to the inconsistency of older comics and a lazy writer, but it's probably the most extreme example of this rule.
    • In one issue of the Justice League, shortly after Wonder Woman had been blinded in battle in her own comic, the League was testing to see if she was still up to membership standards. As she was cheerfully thrashing the Flash, Green Lantern, and several others, Batman is seen off to the side talking with Superman. A few panels later, Wonder Woman has to use her bracelets to block a bullet...fired by Superman. As incongruous as it is to see Superman holding a gun, he has no actual problem with them (and was probably trained to use them on the Kent farm), while Batman couldn't bring himself to fire one even as a deliberately non-lethal test.
    • While Batman does not use guns, his loyal butler Alfred has no qualms about them. Alfred Pennyworth has threatened or actually shot numerous people throughout comics history with pistols, rifles, and shotguns. Most notably, it is Alfred who kills the Penguin in Batman Earth 1. The apparent justification is twofold. First is that Alfred, in his mid-sixties, is unable to fight on a competitive level. Second is that Batman trusts Alfred's judgement implicitly, which he does not for the Robins, and certainly does not trust himself. Alfred actually deconstructs this trope in one instance, correctly pointing out how a bad guy got past all of the Wayne Manor's "clever traps" and actually got close enough to be a lethal threat to Alfred if he hadn't been armed. He goes on to say how, compared to Bruce, he's a "frail and defenseless old man" with none of the strength or youth to fight in direct physical combat, and how it was a criminal like the one he'd just taken down who had killed Martha and Thomas Wayne rather than guns in general; he also offhandedly mentions how he apparently hides guns in the Wayne Manor where Bruce won't find them, though he at least loads them with frangible plastic rounds, but not for the sake of the would-be burglars—more to keep bloodstains off the flooring.
    • Batman's distaste for guns gets talked about in Grant Morrison's JLA/WildCATS crossover, in which the League hooks up with the premiere heroes of Jim Lee's WildStorm line. At one point when both teams go up against Epoch the Time Lord, Batman asks the raygun-toting Grifter just how good he is. When Grifter brags that in his universe Batman would have been his kid sidekick, Batman then adds, "Then you won't mind doing this without the guns." Grifter pauses for a Beat, then quips, "Aw, why not? I'll try anything once!" The beginning of the crossover features an encounter with Epoch and Wally West while he was still Kid Flash, who sizes up his new foe's huge high-tech rifle by commenting, "One of the first things I've learned in the superhero game. 'Gun' equals 'bad guy'."
    • Batman: The Brave and the Bold used this as a plot point in the final episode. Bat-Mite is trying to get the series cancelled and Ambush Bug attempts to stop him, but Batman refuses to listen when Bug tells him that the world has been changed (which includes some glaringly obvious changes, such as the addition of a bunch of silly gadgets, Batman having a wife and child, and a dog sidekick modeled after Scrappy Doo). That is, until Batman uses a pair of handguns to fight crime, which Bug points out is an insanely Out-of-Character Moment; at this point Batman finally realizes that Bug is right and starts fighting back against Bat-Mite.
    • Jason Todd was taught how to use guns by Batman, while at the same time acknowledging Bruce's own aversion to guns. And even used a live gun, at least once, in order to escape, by forcing their assailants to take cover. In Batman: The Cult, Batman and Jason use rifles and machine-guns that fire tranquilizer darts that otherwise function nearly identically to normal firearms.
      • At another point, Jason Todd uses a shotgun to destroy a Commissioner Gordon Manhunter impersonator (no, really) and save Batman. He doesn't have much of a reaction to this besides "good work, Robin".
    • In Mike Mignola's Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham, the Waynes are killed by knife, and Batman freely uses guns, though he never actually shoots anyone. He does have an aversion to knives, though.
    • Depending on how you look at it, Batman's grappling gun is an aversion.
    • Batman using guns with lethal intent is an early hint in Flashpoint that not only is this timeline drastically changed but also that this isn't "really" Batman — it's revealed a few scenes later that this Batman is Thomas Wayne who became a murderous vigilante after Bruce was killed by Joe Chill in Crime Alley, which also drove his wife Martha insane and turned her into the Joker.
  • An early issue of the Buffy Season 8 comic book had this to say:
    Buffy: No Slayer carries a gun, ever. End of talk, good talk.
  • Bullseye doesn't like guns because they're boring. He'd much rather kill someone with a playing card, or a shuriken, or his own poop. Which isn't to say he'll never use them. During the "Guardian Devil" Daredevil arc, Bullseye admitted that Daredevil was "almost" his better, so he decided to subvert his principles and shot Daredevil. He also tried to kill Deadpool with a rocket launcher. It didn't work because...it's Deadpool.
  • Steve Rogers as Captain America averts this considering he originally did not have a problem carrying a pistol along with his original triangular shield. He drops the side arm later because he finds that his newer circular shield is so useful as a weapon that he decides that is typically the only one he needs most of the time. His successor and former sidekick, Bucky Barnes, took this further and carried a sidearm (a modified luger) and a knife alongside the shield to compensate for the fact he lacked Steve's Super-Soldier abilities; this led to Flanderisation where Bucky was seen as the "Captain America with a gun" and got written encouraging other heroes to use guns in an emergency.
  • In the Italian comic book Diabolik, the eponymous Villain Protagonist never uses a gun. Not from having issues with killing (he'll immediately kill you if he thinks it's useful), but because their noise tend to give away the stealth element he always counts on and he's way better with knives.
  • In the Doctor Strange mini-serial "The Oath," Doc tracks down a man who shot him (with a silver bullet, fired from the Walther P-38 that was Hitler's personal weapon) and later uses the gun himself. Once. And promptly dissolves it into fireflies.
    Doctor Strange: Ghastly. Last time I touch one of these things.
  • In Matt Wagner's Grendel, the first Grendel, Hunter Rose is a Bad Ass Normal who frequently slaughters dozens of gun-wielding opponents armed with only his trademark fork-sword-spear-naginata-thing. Even when deprived of this weapon temporarily during his crossover with The Shadow, he instead opts to wield a hunting knife rather than a firearm. As the aforementioned co-star notes, this seems to come from "a romantic attachment to bladed weapons", rather than particular issues with firearms.
  • One Batman related character, the Huntress, is willing to kill and uses a crossbow and throwing knives to get the job done. Unlike most other examples, she doesn't avoid guns because she looks down on them, she's stated that she's just not very good with them.
  • Nny from Johnny the Homicidal Maniac never kills with a gun (with only one exception, though that was for a murder-suicide). His stance on it is that they should only be used on oneself.
  • Detective-Judge Armitage, a Judge Dredd spin-off character. His general attitude is deconstruction of the Technical Pacifist: he absolutely refuses to carry or use a gun, but has no qualms about, for instance, broken bottles. However, it is stated that Detective-Judges don't carry firearms generally. There was a more recent story where Armitage did carry a gun on a raid.
  • The Kingpin also doesn’t use guns all that much, preferring to take out enemies with his fists. He does have a laser in his cane, but he doesn’t use it frequently.
  • Loki admits they don't use guns. They prefer their own methods.
  • Modesty Blaise's sidekick Willie Garvin. His case is a bit special, since he only dislikes handguns, and only dislikes them because he thinks they inspire overconfidence (though his terrible pistol marksmanship might be a factor, too...). He has used rifles and shotguns to great effect on multiple occasions, but he prefers thrown weapons. His weapons of choice are knives, but he has also included short pieces of pipe, boomerangs, and large coins to great effect. (If a handgun is all he has, he's been known to throw it.)
  • The Punisher: Averted straight to hell and back with Frank. Guns are his first, best, and last choice to deal with criminals he targets. His internal monologue when targeting a martial arts expert bears this out:
    Punisher: Karate. Know a little. Use it when I have to. But the way I see it, if you're too close to shoot, you're too close, period.
  • Rapunzel's Revenge:
    Rapunzel: I was noticing how without guns in their hands, most folk around here turned pale. Made me realize I'd never seen Jack touch a gun except to throw it away.
  • Silent Hill: Sinner's Reward:
    • Jack Stanton, being a professional hit man himself, averts this trope, as he comes equipped with several types of firearms when he ends up in Silent Hill.
    • Sara, whom Jack meets in Silent Hill, plays this trope straight. After Jack frees her, he offers a gun to Sara, who adamantly refuses to take it. However, as the story develops, it turns out that she wouldn't need one, anyway...
  • Most Mobians, especially those under King Acorn, are seen with a dislike of guns in Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics), mostly due to a royal decree after one king's son was shot in an accident. This was a major sticking point with the Echidnas, as the Brotherhood of Guardians refused to help against the returned Dr. Robotnik because the Mobians refused to take up weapons of that sort.
  • Spider-Man villain Kraven the Hunter disdained the use of guns and rarely even used a bow and arrows during most of his career, preferring to hunt his prey, whether it's wild animals or costumed heroes like Spidey, on equal terms. Ironically, after succumbing to insanity, he used a firearm on himself to take his own life. In fact, in that very storyline, Spidey freaks out when he sees Kraven approaching him with a rifle, noting how unlike him it is.
  • Will Eisner's two-fisted creation The Spirit is known for never using a gun.
  • Zigzagged with Tombstone, another Spider-Man villain. While he has used a gun from time to time, he much prefers to kill his victims, who are usually much weaker than he is, with his bare hands, most often by strangulation.
  • This trope holds true for several of the heroes in Squadron Supreme, and leads them to ban and destroy all guns as part of their Utopia Project. The trope later causes a Heroic BSoD for one character when, in a panic, he grabs an automatic weapon and opens fire on a team of villains.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Mirage):
    • The turtles notice on several occasions in the comics that they hate guns. At one point where they use some as a part of disguise Leonardo points out that he do not want any shooting and another of the turtles have already unloaded his gun. And in the Archie comic they think that lasers may be cool but also boring and too effective.
    • Raphael is the only one to break the rule — twice in fact. The first time is in the Image series, where he guns down several gangsters. The second is in the Archie comics, where he uses a laser gun to shoot a villain, who survives.
  • Mr. X, formerly of the Thunderbolts, is an... interesting case. He doesn't like guns because he thinks they aren't personal enough; he's a peerless killer who forms an empathic bond with his victims, relishing the moment of their deaths, so up-close killing is extremely important to him.
  • Tintin frequently uses guns, but admits at one point that he's never entirely comfortable with the idea of handling one.
  • The Transformers (IDW):
    • The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye: Trailcutter has serious views on guns, and has somehow managed to go through a several-million-year-long war without using them very often. But then, he's got his Magnawheels and his trusty forcefield. Later on he gets guns installed in his legs, like all the cool 'bots.
    • The society of Caminus, introduced in The Transformers: Windblade, favors the use of bladed weapons as they consider guns wasteful. Windblade and Chromia use a sword and poleaxe respectively, and when we see the Camien Security forces in The Transformers: Combiner Wars, they use spears. By that time, however, Chromia has started using projectile weaponry.
  • In Watchmen, Nite Owl says that Rorschach didn't shoot Moloch because that way of killing someone is too ordinary. Presumably this is why Rorschach chose to improvise when he is cornered by the police instead of picking up the gun. The gun was also empty, and Rorschach only kills criminals; crazy as he is, he doesn't bear ill will against police officers, and only fights them at all in order to escape.
  • Wonder Woman is mostly nonchalant about guns, they're used as part of a reaction time improving game back home in her Golden Age appearances where Amazons play "bullets and bracelets" where they shoot at each other and deflect the bullets, she dislikes them more post-crisis where there are no guns on Themyscira. She however always hates that they're a weapon without any realistic non-lethal applications outside her home island and will often crush guns tossed her way if they're not going to be needed for a criminal investigation later.
  • In X-Men: Gold, what does Kitty Pryde do when she encounters a mutant-hating serial killer gunman. She goes to the armory to fetch a katana!! She tells the killer that the X-Men have enough guns and weapons to outfit a large army, but she doesn't like guns. Going mano et mano with the killer, almost gets her killed and Colossus gets injured trying to save her.
  • Zipi y Zape: Gendarmes (not policemen as it should be, because of censorship) use sabers instead of guns.

    Fanfiction 
  • In Zero no Tsukaima: Saito the Onmyoji, the characters briefly suspect the villain Graf Johan Von Leopold was involved with or was the assassin who earlier had tried to kill Princess Henrietta with a rifle. Emereldas explains he couldn't be because he's a magic supremacist who has disdain for muggle methods like guns.
  • As Maria laments in Echoes of Eternity, Gerald Robotnik hated guns after the suicide of his son and hated them even moreso after Maria was murdered:
    Maria: He had never even let her touch a gun. He hated them, despised them. They ended lives. They hurt people. They had stolen his son and his granddaughter away. And after all the injustices those terrible objects had inflicted on him, her grandfather had been mowed down by the very weapon that had taken everything.
  • Fate/Harem Antics: After observing Archer and her guns in action, Assassin mentions that she dislikes guns because they are too flashy and loud, making them useless for silent kills.
  • The Mountain and the Wolf: When flying near a Chaos Dwarf fortress, the Ironborn are terrified by the noise the dwarf cannons make. The Wolf contemptuously refers to their cannons as the weapons of cowards.
  • Springaling: Springtrap of all people can't stand using or hearing firearms. This stems from an incident in his youth where a fighting dog bit his leg and he was shot by accident in the process of getting it off him. Once he got out of the hospital, he was tasked with shooting the dog to put it down and was unable to give it a headshot because his hands kept shaking. Once Springtrap explains this, the Puppet apologizes for shooting him during a paintball fight.

    Films — Animated 
  • Guns are the Berserk Button of The Iron Giant. This is because he was designed to be a weapon of war, and him seeing a gun causes his defense systems to fire up. However, when Hogarth installs a sense of morality in him, he has this quote towards the end of the film:
    Iron Giant: I am not a gun.
  • Sir Lionel Frost, in Missing Link, is a downplayed case in that he is fully willing to shoot if he comes in possession of a gun during a fight and is a pretty skilled marksman, but he doesn't seem interested in keeping any guns once the fight ends. That is, Lionel is fine with using guns but not owning them.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Bishop in Aliens quietly refuses a pistol when preparing to head off to call down a dropship. Supplemental materials explain that military synthetics like Bishop are restricted to non-combat roles, but even in the special circumstances presented, he must have known that a dinky little sidearm wouldn't be much help if he ran into any Xenomorphs (that, and his directive to protect his compatriots meant any weapon he took would be one they couldn't use to defend themselves with later).
  • Black Panther (2018): Wakandans generally dislike using firearms but given how their armor and weapons are made from vibranium, it's more of a case of Guns Are Worthless as even their spears can fire sonic pulses capable of taking out a tank. Averted, however, with the country's War Dog spies who resort to using firearms since they operate outside of Wakanda and can't use vibranium without blowing their cover.
  • Jason Bourne, after The Bourne Identity. Having declared his intention to give up killing people, he spends the next two films beating the living hell out of every enemy to cross his path but, despite killing three of them, never once fires a gun. He's even seen taking guns off opponents and then throwing them away a couple of times.
  • Brotherhood of the Wolf: While his friends are using melons as an impromptu shooting range, Mani, a Native American, refuses to join in because he finds muskets noisy and crude. Instead, he throws his tomahawk and splits a melon.
  • As Drew Barrymore produced the Charlie's Angels (2000) films, the Angels use martial arts instead of guns. Consequently, their iconic Angels Pose has them switch from holding guns to holding up their hands in martial arts stances.
  • Cloud Atlas: Luisa says that guns make her sick. This might tie her story in with the pacifist Moriori tribe in the Adam Ewing storyline, and more prominently with Robert Frobisher's story.
  • Unlike a lot of action movies dealing with terrorists, Gordon Brewer from Collateral Damage never uses a gun to kill anyone. He even throws a gun away when he gets shot at.
  • The Dark Knight
    • In that trilogy, Bruce's aversion to guns is cast differently. While the comic book Batman essentially doesn't like guns because a gun was used to kill his parents, this Bruce Wayne was willing to shoot Chill and have vengeance until that was denied him. Later, after realizing what really killed his parents, Bruce's approach eschews guns because they represent that wrong minded mindset of vengeance he once had.
    • On the other side, the Joker claims he doesn't like guns because they make things end too quickly, and prefers knives, so that he may savor the reactions of his victims. Then again, he is personally shown using guns during several of his attacks, including pistols, shotguns, and rocket launchers. In his case it seems to be more that he personally has more fun knifing his victims but not to the point where he won't use guns in situations where knives are not practical. However one can note that he only uses a single gun at a time and always tosses it away when he no longer needs it, but has a large number of personal knives he carries on him at all times.
  • Destry Rides Again: Destry refuses to wear or use a gun in his new role as deputy until Wash is killed, preferring to handle things using tact and diplomacy. He does demonstrate his firearms prowess at one point, though, using a mook's gun to shoot all the knobs off a decorative wagon wheel in rapid succession.
  • Diary of the Dead. After giving one of their colleagues who's turning into a zombie the coupe-de-grace, The Professor hands the pistol over to someone else, saying it's too easy to use. Later however he picks up a bow saying that it "feels friendlier, somehow" (we later discover that he's a former member of the archery team at Eton).
  • Al Powell from Die Hard. He states that the reason why he can't use a gun anymore is because he accidentally shot a kid who was using a toy gun. Later, when Karl begins to attack McClane at the end, Al pulls out his gun and guns down Karl.
  • In Disturbing the Peace, town marshal Jim Dillon has not carried a gun since he shot his partner during a hostage situation and left him paralyzed from the neck down.
  • A rare villainous example is Mr. Han from Enter the Dragon. Having set up his criminal empire on an island partially within Hong Kong's territorial waters (illegal possession of firearms is a serious offense in Hong Kong), being a martial arts aficionado and having already been attacked by a gunman once explain his reluctance to let anyone near him with a gun. Bruce Lee himself was a gun collector in Real Life and very much a Combat Pragmatist, so his films often included some kind of Hand Wave as to why his characters couldn't just grab a gun, shoot the bad guys, and be done with it.
  • Craig's father in Friday gives a Father and Son Talk to Craig about how guns symbolize a lack of strength and foresight, and reminisces about a time when problems would be solved with fists instead.
  • In Gangs of New York Bill the Butcher doesn't like to use guns when he fights, preferring to stick to meat cleavers and butcher's knives, because he follows a strict code of honor. His arch-rival Priest Vallon held the same belief, so when Bill's Natives faced off against Vallon's Dead Rabbits the fight included just about every weapon but guns. This also goes for later in the movie when young Amsterdam Vallon and the resurrected Dead Rabbits negotiate a duel with Bill's gang, and when agreeing on what weapons will be allowed, Amsterdam specifies that there will be no pistols, to which Bill replies "Good boy."
  • Most slasher movie killers will kill someone in every which way possible, but almost never use guns. Like the usual Blood Knight example, they're too quick to lend themselves well to the violent sadism slasher villains are known for and they're also not very scary. In Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, however, Michael does use a shotgun... to stab somebody.
  • Hot Fuzz: As part of the film's genre parody, Nicolas Angel doesn't like guns but is also very skilled at using them.
  • Layer Cake. When Gene shows off his stash of guns, the protagonist protests that he hates guns, then almost immediately takes one and starts fawning over it.
  • Captain Nemo in the film version of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, when told to draw his gun, proudly states "I walk a different path" and proceeds to kick ass with Indian martial arts. He does use a pistol in the ending scenes of the film, but only because the enemies he's engaging are above him and out of melee range.
  • Parodied in MacGruber, where the main character insists that "he don't roll that way" without giving a good reason for why he refuses guns in favor of MacGyvering up gadgets. In the final act, he finally admits that he has no moral reason to avoid guns. He's just embarrassed about never learning how to use them. When he actually uses a gun in desperation, he finds that he absolutely loves it.
  • In The Maltese Falcon (1941), when Sam Spade is asked why he doesn't carry a gun, he simply replies that he doesn't like them.
  • Leo the insurance investigator in Money Movers. Even when undercover as a security guard, he does not load his revolver; an act which later saves his life.
  • A Most Violent Year: Whatever else Abel may be, he is loath to equip his fleet of drivers with guns, due to the possible legal repercussions which he cannot afford.
  • In Mystery Men, the Blue Raja outright states he won't use guns. (He even has a problem with knives, his weapon of choice being forks.)
  • Wong Fei Hong in Once Upon a Time in China starring Jet Li. However he doesn't even need a gun, since he can flick a bullet from his fingers into a person's head.
  • Our Man Flint
    • The villain organization Galaxy is reluctant to use guns to kill their opponents. The Galaxy leaders even point out that their Island Base is free of guns in an attempt to persuade The Hero Derek Flint to join them.
    • Flint himself turns down a Walther PPK that his boss tries to issue him, saying he has no need of it. He prefers to use his martial arts skills, though he's entirely willing to kill when necessary.
  • The President's Analyst is initially intrigued at how a government agent patient can kill in an official capacity and thus relieve his hostilities - but is increasingly horrified at the casual gun violence he encounters. He emphatically states he's not a man of violence, and at movies' end when he and his spy friends have to shoot their way out of enemy headquarters, he pushes away an offered machine gun. Subverted minutes later when he's blasting away with a big grin growing on his face.
  • The Raid: Mad Dog, the main villain's top enforcer who is implied to be a bit of a Psycho for Hire, has a chance to shoot Sgt. Jaka, but throws away the gun, opting instead to beat him to death with his bare fists. And knees.
    Mad Dog: I've never really liked using these. Takes away the rush. Squeezing a trigger is like ordering takeout.
  • In The Rundown, the Rock's character shows a strong dislike of guns. One of the people in the film even comments, "I never met an American that didn't like guns." However, during the climactic gunfight, his Berserk Button is pushed when Travis is under fire and in need of help - deciding to put aside his disdain for firearms, he proceeds to open a can of lead whoopass on the enemies. For a person that doesn't like guns, he sure as hell is quite handy with 'em. In his earlier conversations, he implies that he used to use guns all the time, which wound up with him in debt to a crime boss in the first place.
    Travis: Let me get this straight - you never use guns?
    Beck: No.
    Travis: Never.
    Beck: Never.
    Travis: What if your best friend was gonna die, you wouldn't pick up a gun?
    Beck: No guns.
    Travis: Santa Claus would pick up a gun to save his best friend.
    Beck: Do I look like Santa Claus?
    Travis: What do you say? Guns make you whooh-poco-loco? Bang-bang-crazy?
    Beck: I pick up guns, bad things happen to people. I don't like that.
    Travis: What kind of things?
    Beck: Very bad things, Travis. Walk.
    Travis: What about knives?
    Beck: Move.
  • Narrowly avoided in Rush Hour 2. The script called for Jackie Chan to accidentally catch a pistol during a climactic scuffle, only to immediately flip out and throw it away. Jackie pointed out that it was not only internally inconsistent for his character (a cop who previously had no problem using guns), but also extremely stupid of him to ditch a weapon when surrounded by people trying to kill him.
  • In The Score, Nick never uses a gun on a job, and he is very upset when he discovers Jack is carrying one.
  • Serenity: The Operative carries a gun and knows how to use it, but he only uses it on special occasions, like when Mal manages to piss him off. He says he prefers to kill people with martial arts and swordsmanship because those methods are more honorable.
  • JJ from Shaft (2019) has a huge disdain for guns, which is probably one of the reasons he's an analyst for the FBI rather than a field agent. Though on occasion, he won't hesitate to use one in a shootout.
  • Princess Vespa in Spaceballs says she doesn't like guns. But when one of the eponymous villains singes her hair, she goes Rambo on them.
  • In Spectre, when Bond insists on teaching Madeleine how to use a gun, she unloads it with expertise, telling him that she hates guns because one night a man came to her house to kill her father, Mr. White. Madeleine, knowing her father kept a pistol hidden in a cupboard, got the gun and shot the intruder. Even moreso, it's implied by a remark Oberhauser makes later in the movie where he says he met Madeline when she was a child but she doesn't remember him, coupled with his malice towards her that seems to go beyond simply tormenting Bond, that he was that assassin that Madeline shot and that, just like with Bond, he's still carrying a grudge towards her over it even years later. She's still willing to use it to wound Mr. Hinx during his fight with Bond moments later.
  • Star Wars:
  • Blue Jones of Sucker Punch admits that he hates guns, and holds one by his fingers in disgust as he passes it to the Mook behind him. This is after he has murdered Blondie and Amber. He shot Blondie to death.
  • In Superman II, after disarming a deputy of his shotgun and harmlessly discharging it into his own chest, General Zod contemptuously refers to it as a "harmless noisemaker". Granted, the dude is a Kryptonian who's Immune to Bullets and can shoot lasers from his eyes, so guns are a significant downgrade for him. Averted in a deleted scene, in which during the attack on the White House, Zod grabs an M16 from a soldier and uses it to mow down several other soldiers just for giggles.
  • Swelter: Sheriff Bishop doesn't carry a gun, a fact which numerous characters comment on. When he finally does get pushed over the edge into using one, it's clear that his reluctance isn't from a lack of skill.
    • Bishop is contrasted with his Deputy who is an award-winning trick sharpshooter with a shiny chrome pistol. The first time we see the Deputy try to actually pull his gun on someone, he dies.
  • In the Vengeance (2022), Ben repeatedly discourages the Shaw family's wish to find the person who killed Abby and kill them. By the end, he shoots and kills the person responsible himself.
  • In the X-Men Film Series, Magneto's younger self uses guns when he needs to, while the older Magneto sneers at them. This is partly because of his background as a Holocaust survivor, and partly because humans rely on guns to fight, and he sees it as a sign of their inferiority. Another reason he hates firearms may be because he accidentally crippled his former friend Charles by deflecting a bullet fired by CIA agent Moira McTaggert.
    "You Homo Sapiens and your guns!"
    • Another reason is that younger Magneto had yet to master his powers on the level of his later self being able to only move small metal objects in obvious ways until late in his first movie. So it was easier for him to use his powers to take people's guns and then shoot them rather than try to kill them with magnetism. Once he's able to launch a coin at speeds faster than any bullet, obviously he'd grown beyond any further use for guns.

    Literature 
  • Wayne from The Alloy of Law doesn't use guns due to a traumatic incident in his Back Story.
  • The dinosaurs from Anonymous Rex are like this, notably Ernie. They prefer to do their fighting hand-to-hand, since they're well equipped for that, and consider firearms unnatural.
  • Butler Parker came to be this after a while. In the early books he used an ancient Colt — usually for intimidation purposes, as it was old enough to make people afraid it might explode if fired — in later books he wasn't seen with the gun anymore, preferring blowgun darts tipped with sleep poison.
  • Chocoholic Mysteries: Wildflower Hill in Moose Motive. As a pacifist who believes in nonviolence, she won't allow anyone to keep guns on her property, which is why her grandson-in-law had to entrust his own pistol to his father for safekeeping.
  • The Coruscant Nights trilogy from Star Wars Legends features a supporting character who was a member of the Grey Paladins, a Jedi sect that favored blasters to lightsabers. The mainstream (lightsaber-wielding) Jedi Order considered them quasi-heretical.
  • In The Destroyer books, assassins Remo Williams, and Chiun don't like guns. They consider them toys for amateurs. Compared to them, they are right. However, Chiun has used a gun at least once. When a Big Bad was escaping by helicopter, he used a pistol to shoot the pilot from very, very far away. He also sank a submarine with one, by throwing it very hard.
  • In Divergent, as a result of shooting Will, Tris develops a gun-phobia.
  • Doc Savage doesn't normally carry a gun (his reasoning is that anyone who carries a gun comes to depend on it and is thus less effective when disarmed). That doesn't stop him from using one when necessary (with the obligatory Improbable Aiming Skills). Doc and his men do, however, utilize special "handguns" of Doc's own design which fire "mercy bullets" — special anesthetic capsules which conveniently put the bad guys to sleep without killing them.
  • Dr. Thorndyke dislikes them, though he has a collection of firearms he will use occasionally when confronting a particularly deadly foe, as in The D'Arblay Mystery:
    "I hate fire-arms!" [Thorndyke] exclaimed as he viewed the collection distastefully. "They are dangerous things, and when it comes to business they are scurvy weapons. Any poltroon can pull a trigger. But we must put ourselves on equal terms with our opponent, who is certain to be provided."
  • In Dragonback, Jack doesn't own any lethal weapons and wouldn't pick one up if he found one, a habit drilled into him by Uncle Virge. Carrying a gun gives no real benefit to a Con Man, and invites the risk of being blamed if someone gets shot while he's around. He's fine with nonlethal weapons such as slapsticks and tanglers.
  • Hoshi from Hoshi and the Red City Circuit hates weapons of all times, which doesn't stop Sorreno from forcing her to carry a shocker after she's beaten up in a hate crime.
  • R.A Salvatore plays with this in many of his characters. Of them, Drizzt Do'Urden is probably the most opposed, as seen when he goes up against pirates armed with a smokepowder cannon in Passage to Dawn.
  • Sam Spade from The Maltese Falcon.
  • In Men at Arms, when the Gonne is invented, it's given to the Assassins' Guild for safekeeping because they would think it was too dangerous and inelegant a weapon to use. Though the Gonne is destroyed in the events of Men at Arms, later Discworld books continue the theme, as the Assassins don't like the "spring-gonnes" (heavily modified crossbows, though nothing as powerful as The Gonne) either. Anyone using it within the city limits would find its capacity to be concealed on the human body severely tested.
  • John Taylor from Nightside doesn't use guns, because they make it very hard to resolve situations by saying "Sorry". Also, he generally takes opponents down through trickery, dirty tricks or his special power. In his own word "I have never felt the need."
  • Odd Thomas hates guns, mainly because his mother frequently threatens suicide with one and also threatened to shoot him because he wouldn't stop crying while he was sick.
  • The vampire Salem in Old Scores looks down on guns—not for any moral aversion, but just because he considers them beneath him. When circumstances force him to rely on one, though, he proves himself an adept marksman.
  • Quiller, from the Spy Fiction novels by Adam Hall, doesn't like guns for several reasons; they give him away as a spy, they cause overconfidence, and they're noisy. He prefers to rely on his martial arts skills. He occasionally refers contemptuously to gun-carrying adversaries as "gun-dependent," indicating that if you get the gun away from them, they're psychologically paralyzed and helpless against you. A couple of novels have him using a sniper rifle when It's the Only Way, so he's pragmatic about this trope.
  • Repairman Jack is very competent with guns, and rarely is without one. However, in the book Hosts he stops a mass shooting (with his own gun) and later laments that he wishes he lived in a world without guns. He quickly admits that if there were only one gun in the world, he'd want to be the one to own it, and since guns are so common, he has no problem equipping himself with plenty of the best.
  • A close variant in Reign of the Seven Spellblades. Frances Gilchrist, the spellology professor, despises sword arts (the commonplace use of short swords as both an alternative to wands and a close-quarters weapon) as a concept. Justified in part because even though it made mages harder for Muggles to kill,note  it also led to an increase in mage-on-mage violence. She instead advocates magical alternatives for close-in defense, such as familiars.
  • In The Saga of Darren Shan, the honor code of vampires and vampanezes forbids them to use guns (as well as pretty much any other projectile weapon, like bows); they feel that guns are for cowards. The problem is circumvented by hiring regular humans as soldiers.
  • In the Carl Hiaasen novel Stormy Weather, Ira Jackson, a mafia thug, doesn't carry guns, partly because it's a condition of his parole, but mostly he feels anyone who carries a gun gets shot with one sooner or later. Besides, he prefers the more personal touch of crucifying his victims.
  • Sophie Audouin Mamikonian uses this trope on an entire planet, in Tara Duncan. All of its inhabitants fear them, and the laws prohibits the ownership and the use of guns. Guns often either don't work and explode in the user's hands or they work too well and the bullets shred everything in their path.
  • Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird used to be called "Ol' One Shot" and used to be the "deadest shot in Maycomb County in his time"...but his children don't even realize he knows how to fire one until he has to shoot and kill a rabid dog.
  • In Trigger Warning, most of Kelton College's residents are hyperbolically anti-gun, to the point where discussing the Second Amendment is against campus guidelines. The college is also a gun-free zone, which Jake repeatedly ridicules. This later creates a situation where Jake is the only one who can defend himself against the armed attackers.
  • The hero of Tunnel in the Sky is advised by his sister to carry a knife, not a gun when he goes on a survival exam to an alien planet as a gun will make him feel overconfident.
  • Jay (Popinjay) Ackroyd of Wildcards hates guns. Of course when you can teleport people anywhere just by pointing at them that's not really an issue.

    Live-Action TV 
  • The 100 has this as a culture-wide trait of the Grounders. Justified because the Mountain Men make it a habit to burn down the village of any Grounder who picks up a gun; this has been going on so long, the Grounders now view touching a gun with superstitious dread.
  • In The Andy Griffith Show, Andy didn't really dislike guns and was certainly not above using one when the situation called for it (he even happily accepted a shotgun as a gift at one point), but he refused to carry one on him and wouldn't even take one into most situations where someone else would. As he explained it, a gun was a tool of intimidation, and he would rather people obey him out of respect than out of a fear of getting shot.
  • In Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., May usually goes on missions unarmed, and dismisses the use of firearms with "If I need a gun, I'll take one." Nonetheless, she's comfortable with guns, and has no problem disarming an enemy and then shooting them with their own gun. In Season 6, she tries to murder one of SHIELD's prisoners, and one of the things the team immediately flags as suspicious (alongside attacking an unarmed captive) is that she shot him, where they would expect her to try to beat him with her bare hands. It turns out she was under someone else's control at the time.
  • In Arrow, Oliver specifically explains why Team Arrow doesn't use guns, saying that a bow and arrow is more deliberate and less careless, forcing you to choose carefully before dispensing potentially lethal force.
  • Mr. Freeze on the campy Batman (1966) series seemed to dislike normal guns, preferring his Freeze Ray. Ironically, he was able to defeat the Dynamic Duo by using his weapon, not bothering with some silly Death Trap like other bad guys on the show.
  • A few characters in Bonanza. Notable was one Villain of the Week, a Jerkass Blood Knight boxer who liked to bully people around and beat them senseless. He nonetheless had a disdain for firearms, refusing to carry one. When a woman pulls a gun on him in an attempt to defend herself, he snarls, "Why do you people always resort to guns?" and knocks her out before she can react.
  • Katagiri Takuma in Boss. Became this after a bad experience.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • "These things? Never helpful." Guns can hurt vampires, but not kill them, whereas the Slayer is just as vulnerable to guns as any human. If vampires are given the idea to load up on guns, fighting them would be much tougher.
    • However, she's perfectly alright with using crossbows, which are effective against vampires.
    • On the other hand, there was one case where a bazooka was rather useful in the Buffyverse. "What's that do?"
    • Of course the Slayer, not being bullet proof, has a vested interest in preventing gunplay from breaking out. Spike nearly shoots her in "Fool for Love", but, finding Badass Decay has set in, is unable to go through with it.
    • In the episode "Angel", the vampire Darla takes out two pistols to hunt down Buffy and Angel. Of course, as she acknowledges, Angel (who's also a vampire) will not die from being shot, but it will still hurt like hell.
    • As of the end of Season 6, Buffy has a personal reason to hate guns — she was nearly killed with one in "Seeing Red" and her friend Tara actually was killed.
    • It's suggested Buffy and Slayers have a moral interest in not resorting to guns. The comics play with this idea.
      • Averted with Simone, a Slayer gone bad who accuses Buffy of not letting other Slayers use guns to keep them weak and inferior to her.
    • Wesley uses them all the time on the show Angel, and they are frequently effective. Vampires can't be killed with guns, but there are plenty of demons that can. Not to mention that Wesley is one of the few Buffyverse characters who's got no problem with killing evil humans, as well as demons.
    • In "That Old Gang of Mine", Gunn is horrified his old gang now uses guns, even though he spent years leading them in a guerrilla war against a vampire nest. This was before he found out they were the ones responsible for wiping out a number of friendly demons, which proved the weapons effective if nothing else.
    • The RPG comments about guns in the Buffy-verse: they're not too effective against vampires, your primary foes, and they make a lot of noise and leave a lot of evidence, making them sub-optimal in your secret war against the forces of evil.
    • Seems to be a trait of the actress. Other roles Sarah Michelle Gellar had played also have this trope.
    • In Season 8, the one time Buffy allows the other Slayers to arm up when the army is gunning for them, she still refuses to use one herself.
    • In Season 9, Buffy is shot at with blanks during a failed bodyguard exercise. She's upset that her boss (Kennedy, who offered her the job) did that, even though Deepscan use guns as a matter of course.
  • Michael on Burn Notice isn't above using guns, but he doesn't like them: "Don't fight your wars with guns. Guns make you stupid. Fight your wars with duct tape. Duct tape makes you smart."
  • The sisters of Charmed hate guns. When Cole tries to argue that their magical powers are far more dangerous, Phoebe and Paige point out that they can't accidentally hurt themselves with their powers (indeed, both of them are immune to Piper's most dangerous power).
  • Chuck Bartowski doesn't like guns, to the point of bringing Nunchakus on his first solo mission.
    • Of course, this doesn't stop Chuck from bringing tranquilizer guns on missions in lieu of actual guns with bullets.
    • He especially doesn't like killing; tranquilizers knock people out, but don't kill them. He really only kills in the heat of battles, and even then, most of the time he still prefers to knock them out and then kill them.
    • Neither does Shaw (or so he claimed), which doesn't stop him from using a gun every chance he gets.
  • Columbo: Lieutenant Columbo dislikes guns and is a notoriously bad shot. He appears to get other cops to take his shooting qualifications ("Forgotten Lady"). He'll carry a gun when the situation absolutely calls for it, but even then... He probably doesn't have great depth-perception anyway, considering his glass eye. He seems to have no problem brandishing one on Mo Weinberg in "Undercover" though, but Weinberg does try to shoot him. In "Butterfly in Shades of Grey", the killer sees Columbo without his famous trenchcoat and notes that he doesn't carry a gun, so tries to shoot him later on. Columbo calmly points out that he might not be armed, but he's not alone. He honks the horn on his car and two police officers turn up to arrest the killer. The overall implication, while not outright confirmed, that much of his dislike for guns comes from the fact that he knows he's a terrible shot, and doesn't want to put others in danger when there's plenty of fellow officers who are armed and more than willing to watch his back.
  • On the episode "Penelope" of Criminal Minds, Morgan hands Garcia a gun to defend herself against the psycho heading inside to kill her.
    Garcia: I don't believe in guns!
    Morgan: [shoves it in her hands] Trust me, they are very real!
    • John Blackwolf, the guest cop in the episode "The Tribe", dislikes guns, and dislikes Hotch because he carries two of them. During the climax, he insists Hotch use his baton against the titular tribe, while he uses... a knife. When Hotch does end up shooting one of the killers, Blackwolf scoffs. Hotch then points out that Blackwolf cut up another one badly enough that he's unlikely to survive either, and repeats a line Blackwolf had used earlier: "You can take many paths to get to the same place."
  • Max in Dark Angel turns down the offer of a gun without explanation, immediately followed by a flashback of her sister Eva getting shot and killed early in Max's childhood (directly after stealing a gun — to make the guns=death message doubly clear).
  • Deadwood: Frontier crime boss Al Swearengen is a self-professed "terrible shot" and sticks to throat-slashing. In season three, however, he realizes that his reluctance has become a liability and laments never learning to shoot properly.
  • Doctor Who: The Doctor doesn't like guns. In the vast majority of stories he does not handle guns, even when they are available, and even on the odd occasion that the enemy is not Immune to Bullets. He does use a variety of super-science methods that usually turn out to be no less lethal. For example, he often uses his sonic screwdriver as a projectile weapon. When he does use a gun, it's usually to show that the Godzilla Threshold has been crossed or do something besides shoot directly at the enemy. At times the justification has been made that if you have a gun and an enemy, your inclination is to use the gun to kill your enemy, while he'd prefer to see if there's another way first. Examples and exceptions include:
    • From 1966 Western serial "The Gunfighters": "All these people are giving me guns — I do wish they wouldn't."
    • The Fourth Doctor does like guns, oddly. He blew away a Fendahleen with a shotgun in "Image of the Fendahl". (Loaded with rock salt, granted — but he didn't have any way of knowing the load had been changed, and it was still a lethal shot.) He also has no issues with blasting the giant rat in "The Talons of Weng-Chiang", saying several admiring things about the Chinese fowling piece he uses, calling it "the most fearsome piece of hand-artillery in all England" and pooh-poohing Litefoot's dire prediction that the gun would explode on firing, saying, "Explode? Unthinkable! It was made in Birmingham!" On the other hand, he also says "I never carry firearms" when offered a rifle in "Pyramids of Mars", and tells Leela "I never carry weapons. If people see you mean them no harm, they never hurt you. Nine times out of ten", in "The Robots of Death". When Sarah Jane sees him packing a pistol in "The Seeds of Doom", she points out he'd never actually use it and he agrees.
    • The Fifth Doctor blasted the hell out of the Cyberleader with his own weapon in "Earthshock", and shot an uncased Dalek with a common gun in "Resurrection of the Daleks". He also seems fairly comfortable around guns in "The Visitation".
    • The Sixth Doctor blasts Cybermen with a Cybergun again in "Attack of the Cybermen" and shoots a Dalek in the eyestalk in "Revelation of the Daleks". He threatens the baddies with one in "Vengeance on Varos", but only uses it on machinery. (Five of the six stories mentioned here for Five and Six were the five stories written by Eric Saward, including the four where he actually used the gun on living-ish beings.)
    • The Seventh Doctor is perfectly willing to empty a clip of silver bullets into one of the nasties from "Battlefield". And from his reaction post-sucker punch, this isn't a plot to get Lethbridge-Stewart to take the job instead.
    • It's Justified in the reboot series. Since his seventh life was cut short by a stray bullet because he landed the TARDIS in the wrong part of San Francisco, later incarnations have a lot more reason to dislike firearms and the United States.
    • The very first thing the War Doctor is seen to do after first regenerating from the Eighth is to grab a gunbelt, complete with bullets. This is what indicates to the audience why that incarnation was such a pariah that later ones had trouble speaking of him. We also see him use it, not to shoot enemies, but to graffiti "No More!" on a burned-out wall in the middle of a battlefield. One Gallifreyan soldier put it bluntly to Rassilon: "There was a saying, sir, in the Time War. The first thing you notice about The Doctor of War is that he isn't armed. For many, it's also the last."
    • The Ninth Doctor carries a gun in "Dalek". Granted, he ends up not using it, and he is up against the enemy that he had a special, deep-rooted hatred for. In "Bad Wolf", an enraged Ninth Doctor brandishes a giant gun, but when a frightened underling throws up his hands and says "don't shoot!" the Doctor tosses the gun to the man and says "oh, don't be so thick. Like I was ever gonna shoot!"
    • "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood": Although John Smith, the Doctor's personality while temporarily human, will supervise target practice at the Boarding School he teaches at, during the story's climax, the Doctor's dislike of guns shines through in that although he holds a rifle during the scarecrows' attack, he doesn't fire it at all.
    • "The Sontaran Stratagem"/"The Poison Sky": After repeatedly telling UNIT to not open fire on the Sontarans and getting guns pointed at him, the Tenth Doctor finally gets fed up. When Luke Rattigan tries to hold him at gunpoint, the Doctor simply takes the gun out of Luke's hand and throws it away (without breaking stride), muttering, "If I see one more gun..." The UNIT Colonel eventually gets fed up with Ten's anti-gun speeches and tells him off before attacking conventionally and handing the Sontarans their collective ass.
    • The Tenth Doctor gets into an argument with Jenny in "The Doctor's Daughter" about how he won't use guns. She insists that the tools that he does use would still classify as weapons, so the distinction is arbitrary. In "The End of Time", the Doctor borrows Wilf's old service revolver when he realizes that the Time Lords are escaping the time lock, but ultimately only uses it to destroy a machine. He does point it at others several times, though.
    • The Eleventh uses a pistol in "The Time of Angels", though not to kill. He's surrounded by Weeping Angels on all sides and he uses it to destroy the gravity globe in the room, so that he and his friends will be pulled up by the crashed ship Byzantium's artificial gravity.
    • Eleven also grabs a gun and seems briefly willing to kill Kahler-Jex in "A Town Called Mercy", admitting that many of the times he's shown mercy to his enemies have only allowed them to cause even more havoc. Amy is able to talk him down, however, and the gun is never fired.
    • Eleven also admits that he "shouldn't" like River's blatant use of guns as primary tools, but does.
    • The Twelfth Doctor (who at that point had been tortured by the Time Lords for billions of years and has undergone some Sanity Slippage) uses a stolen Gallifreyan sidearm in "Hell Bent" to shoot and kill the General, in order for him and Clara to escape a situation, but only after asking how many regenerations the General has left (turns out he was on his ninth).
    • The Thirteenth Doctor points out that "brains beat bullets" in "The Ghost Monument", and tells off companion Ryan after his attempt to go Call of Duty on attacking robots fails, making the situation worse (he actually beat them handily, but only in the short term, as the guns they carry aren't capable of keeping them down). This Doctor hates guns very specifically for unexplained reasons, but seems comfortable with violence in general; she's fine with taking out those same robots with an EMP, and later in the episode massacres an attacking monster swarm by burning them to death. She also chews out Jack Robertson in "Arachnids in the UK" when he shoots the giant (and already dying) spider to death.
    • The Sarah Jane Adventures: Former companion Sarah Jane Smith herself is not a fan of guns. As she said to Captain Jack Harkness in "The Stolen Earth", "I've been staying away from you lot. Too many guns," looking pointedly at her son Luke, i.e. she doesn't want guns around the children who hang out with her. She later tells her Kid Sidekick Clyde that guns rarely solve problems without worsening them first. That said, we know from "Pyramids of Mars" that she's a pretty decent shot with a rifle.
    • This brings up a good point. The Doctor may not like guns very much, but recurring enemy Davros pointed out that the Doctor has no issue with their companions firing the guns if it comes down to it.
  • Eerie, Indiana: In "The Hole in the Head Gang", Simon voices many times his disgust and hatred of guns. Justified in a way, as the ancient gun they find gets them into a heap of trouble with a ghostly outlaw.
  • Although only used in a fictional context, in an episode of The Famous Jett Jackson, a producer urges including guns in the Show Within a Show "Silverstone" to increase tension. Jett Jackson refuses in order to be a better role model to the viewers of the show.
  • Homicide: Life on the Street had Detective Frank Pembleton who, for all of his competence and success with his clearance rate, hated to use his gun. This especially became an issue in the season six two-part finale "Fallen Heroes": the first part had him unable to shoot a suspect who participated in a shootout in the headquarters, killing three and wounding two, and the second part had him unable to shoot another suspect who was about to fire on him. His partner and best friend, Tim Bayliss, took the shot instead and ended up seriously wounded in the process, causing Pembleton to resign in shame and guilt.
  • Jake 2.0: Jake Foley doesn't like to use guns because he hates killing, preferring to use his super-strength to knock enemies out and capture them alive. In one episode, he goes up against a Yakuza assassin, whose martial arts easily overcome Jake's enhanced strength. Jake then undergoes a risky procedure to further increase his enhancements in order to defeat the assassin. This works. Unfortunately, the assassin escapes and tries to kill Foley. He has no choice but to pull a gun and shoot her.
  • Kung Fu (1972): As part of his vow to never take lives, Kwai Chang Caine refuses to carry guns and often frowns on gun-wielding allies. He is fast and skilled enough to disarm gun-wielding opponents, and he always disposes of any gun he holds instead of using it.
  • Eliot Spencer in Leverage; he says it's because they are only useful within a certain range, thus not useful in his work as a "Retrieval Specialist".
    • When he is convinced that doing so is absolutely necessary to save his team and take down the Big Bad, he will use guns. Guns Akimbo, to be exact. And he's a One-Man Army.
  • MacGyver:
    • This trope was subject to some Early-Installment Weirdness: the pilot episode's Action Prologue has Mac using a stolen assault rifle to lay down cover fire while rescuing a captured US airman. However, Mac generally doesn't like guns; the episode "Blood Brothers" explained that this was due to a childhood incident where he accidentally shot one of his friends. He has no problems with using them as impromptu tools, however (such as when he took a revolver, removed the bullet cylinder part, and used the frame as a improvised wrench to close a needed valve), or as some sort of Rube Goldbergian "something to make a loud noise to distract the bad guys" device.
    • At times his aversion bordered on the ridiculous: Once, to open a door that was locked, Mac dismantled a bullet, filled the keyhole with the gunpowder, inserted the blasting cap, then hit the cap with the butt of the gun, igniting the gunpowder and blowing up the lock. A solution that (as demonstrated on Mythbusters) was not only impractical but pointless, as that particular kind of lock was the kind that easily broke open when shot.
    • Parodied by RDA himself in an episode of The Simpsons when requesting a list of "common items" by which he could make his next daring escape from the clutches of Patty and Selma. These items included both a gun with no bullets...and bullets!
    • In the episode "The Challenge", MacGyver almost uses a pistol for its primary purpose. He pulls a pistol on a man who had murdered his friend, but someone snapped him out of it.
  • In M*A*S*H, Hawkeye is opposed to guns, though his distaste is less specifically aimed at guns but really anything to do with war in general; guns, ammunition, grenades, mines, tanks, bombs, and artillery also recieve his ire, whether it's shooting at him or not. At one point, Colonel Potter gives Hawkeye an earful for his stubbornness and orders him to fire his pistol. In obedience to the order, Hawkeye fires the pistol into the air. Thankfully, Potter just wanted Hawkeye to let off a shot in order to scare away the soldiers attacking them.
    • Potter himself is willing to use one, but he himself admits later that he's not good with it, and couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. In fact, this holds true for most of the regular cast. Even the usually gung-ho Major Burns was hopeless when he actually tried to use one. Given that all the above characters and a majority of the M*A*S*H cast are medical personnel, not frontline soldiers, the lack of skill and love for guns makes sense.
  • The eponymous hero of Nichols was a soldier for 18 years who gradually became sick of killing. The final straw for him was when the army introduced fully automatic heavy machine-guns. After being made sheriff of his hometown, he refuses to carry a gun.
  • The pilot of Person of Interest has an exchange between Reese and Finch where Finch says he's not fond of firearms. Reese, a former Army Ranger and ex-CIA covert operative, agrees that he doesn't either, but "My philosophy is, if someone has to have them, I'd rather it was me." Later in the episode Reese tells Dirty Cop Lionel Fusco that he doesn't like killing people but he's very good at it.
  • In Sea Patrol, Bird hates guns. After being hunted across an island for sport by two armed men when a survival exercise goes wrong, she shoots one bad guy with his own rifle, but still insists upon hating guns. One has to wonder how she (or some other characters, for that matter) came to join the Royal Australian Navy.
  • In an episode of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, Roxton fights a ninja, and is getting his ass handed to him. When he tries to draw his gun, the ninja knocks it away and says, "Guns are a coward's weapon."
  • On Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, security chief Odo never carries a phaser for moral and practical reasons. His shapeshifting abilities are usually enough to catch criminals on the station, and toting a phaser around would get in the way of them. He is also ethically averse to killing, to the point that he says he doesn't even step on ants.
  • In the Supernatural episode "Simon Said" (S02, Ep05), Dr. Jennings says guns make him nervous, but he can still be psychically compelled to shoot the clerk and himself with a shotgun.
  • J-Roc and Tyrone of Trailer Park Boys are all about the rapper life, except guns. Whenever they come into play, they'll leave the scene. Bubbles also is dead set against guns, but has used them on occasion. He's a decent guy, so he purposely aims to miss, as he doesn't want to hurt anyone, no matter how bad they are.
  • In the Voyagers! episode "Bully and Billy", a major conflict between Bogg and Jeffrey relates to this. Billy the Kid offers to teach Jeffrey how to shoot, but Bogg refuses to allow it.
  • Walker, Texas Ranger has several to name.
    • Villains shoot people. Walker may flash his gun to make an arrest, but he very rarely pulls the trigger. But if you shoot at him...
    • The only true subversion is Victor LaRue, who, after three consecutive murder/mayhem sprees, gets shot down by Walker himself when he attempts to train his gun on the Ranger. Trying to rape Alex three times and remorseless killings of innocent people left him beyond redemption.
    • Walker shot a couple of bad guys in season one. In "The Prodigal Son," he kills one of Mancini's Mooks during his epic motorcycle scene, and in the second part of "Something in the Shadows," he blows away a drug dealer. Both men were armed, though, and shooting at him.
    • Trent Malloy, after an incident where he and another kid were fighting over a gun, resulting in that boy's death. As such, he wouldn't even use a gun during his time in the Army, preferring hand-to-hand combat any day. He wanted a profession that involved helping people, but while religious, he didn't want to be the new pastor of his father's church after he died, nor did he want to join a law enforcement agency, where learning how to handle firearms is mandated, that he opened a karate school named after his father and became a Private Detective. His disdain for guns proves to be his undoing in Season 7's "Special Witness" when he is stabbed by a federally-wanted assassin hired by a mob boss to prevent him from testifying in court against him, and a Special Olympian he was escorting to running practice was the only witness to the attack. Fortunately, he survives and pulls through in time for the trial, with Walker having arrested said assassin.
  • Hershel Green of The Walking Dead has stated that he knows how to shoot, but really doesn't like to. Despite this, though, he has considerable aim even in a low light situation with an unfamiliar firearm.
  • Harrison Blackwood from War of the Worlds (1988) refuses to even so much as handle a gun. He doesn't seem to be opposed to violence in general (once fashioning an impromptu flamethrower to use against the aliens), but often turns down the offer to possess one, no matter the level of danger he could be facing. Of course, then came Season 2...
  • White Collar: Neal Caffrey. Doesn't stop him from being a crack shot; his dad was a cop.
  • Wonder Woman: Wonder Woman took a certain pleasure in destroying the bad guys' guns during the first season, frequently bending them into uselessness. When she goes skeet-shooting in "Gault's Brain", she turns down the shotgun in favor of throwing the shells with her bare hands. Overall, it seems to be less of a specific hatred for guns and more a case of finding it amusing to destroy the enemy's weapons and showing off that she's above firearms in general.
  • In the Xena: Warrior Princess episode "Send In the Clones", Xena and Gabrielle are cloned in the present day. After escaping the lab, Xena defeats a policeman and takes his gun. After trying it out, she dismissively throws it away and forges a sword instead. Given where and when she's from, its no surprise that she'd prefer a weapon she is long familiar with over something she's never even seen before.

    Music 
  • "Saturday Night Special" by Lynyrd Skynyrd.
  • Ayria's "The Gun Song".
  • Shinedown's "My Name (Wearing Me Out)".
  • 311's "Guns (Are For Pussies)"
  • XTC's "Melt The Guns"
  • Downplayed: Eminem cut down rapping gun bars after the 2006 murder of his best friend, Proof, with Shady switching mostly to blades. He started doing gun bars again around Kamikaze after making it clear he supports gun control, and has written several Protest Songs criticising the US government's failure to do anything to stop mass shootings (something he used to hyperbolically support in his early songs).

    Tabletop Games 
  • There is a very niche example in BattleTech where Cassie Suthorn, ace scout of the 17th Recon Regiment, Camacho's Caballeros, has a nearly pathological aversion to the setting's Humongous Mecha. She simultaneously hates, fears, and hunts them, while not being a Mechwarrior herself. Notably, she manages to kill the things almost barehanded; her very first Battlemech kill involved a broom, a bolt-action rifle, and a downed power line. She eventually grudgingly accepts basic training in them after she is forced to pilot a 'Mech to save her regiment from destruction, but even then she only ever seems to take a handful of training courses before throwing it all out the window out of distaste and going back to killing them via Colossus Climb.
  • In In Nomine, the Archangel David hates all ranged weapons (including guns) because he feels they separate a person from the reality of what they're doing. His angels use melee attacks only.
  • In Rocket Age many Venusian warrior cults show open disdain for long ranged weapons. it is taboo for their members to use them, although given that Venusians are giant ape people that isn't exactly a comfort.
  • In Warhammer:
    • Bretonnian knights live by an all-encompassing code of chivalry that disdains missile weapons of all kinds as base, cowardly and ignoble. None of them would dream of using a bow, crossbow or handgun himself, but most are tactically savvy enough to let their peasant retainers bring longbows and trebuchets to battle for support. Some, however, take the knightly disdain for such weapons to extreme heights of religious hatred for enemy missile troops, which is represented in the game by allowing Bretonnian knightly characters to buy this as a virtue. It does however transfer to all ranged weapons and not only guns. The basic code of conduct for Bretonnian knights in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay includes a ban on gunpowder weapons. In fact, none of the knight careers grant proficiency in them. The knightly virtue in question only adds a ban on all ranged weapons on top of it. Averted completely with the Bretonnian navy, as there Ain't No Rule banning ranged weapons outside of noble levies outside of Brettonian soil, so they toss cannonballs around like candy. In fact, the Navy is trying to get the crossbow ban (levies are only equipped with normal bows) clarified to specifically crossbows (and not implicitly assumed to encompass guns as well) and thus allowing the naval bases to be equipped with cannon.
    • Elves as a rule disdain black powder weapons, seeing them as only fit for those not skilled enough with bows and magic (like humans and dwarfs). Even the Dark Elves still swear by their Automatic Crossbows, despite their plain inferiority to the early firearms the Empire uses. In Vermintide II, the Wood Elf Kerillian will use black powder explosives when she has to, but usually bemoans the necessity of it. The High Elves and Wood Elves do have enchanted bows and other magical gear that give similar or better performance to firearms (and can fire more versatile payloads like hagbane, moonshot, and trueflight arrows), partly explaining why their elites don't bother with guns, but said gear isn't standard (High Elf longbow otherwise have identical performance to human ones) and the low-ranking grunts with regular arrows and spears would still do better with even simple matchlocks. Elf characters living in the Empire can use guns in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, just don't expect to find many likeminded kin.
  • Zigzagged in Warhammer 40,000: While taking out servants of the False Emperor from a nice safe distance by aiming for the biggest hat is sure to work, it won't get you points from the Dark Gods since there's no risk involved (except maybe Tzeentch, and as the god of sorcerers, cowards and backstabbers he's even more likely to screw you over). Servants of Khorne, the most kill-happy of the lot, can carry guns, but if they're going to gather skulls for the skull throne they'd better get closer. Amusingly enough, Khorne does have a gun unit (a cannon, specfically) that fires skulls. Averted with the Iron Warriors, who are siege specialists and are appropriately very pro gun. Generally averted as well, with even dedicated close combat units that are not alien monsters or daemons usually carrying at least a pistol and grenades (including the aforementioned Chaos combat units).

    Video Games 
  • Mr. Scratch of Alan Wake's American Nightmare doesn't like guns, but only because he thinks they're too impersonal. He prefers knives, which let you savor the victim's reaction.
  • Downplayed in Aviary Attorney, where prosecutor Severin Cocorico generally keeps out of situations more dangerous than he can handle with a riding crop. When the police Inspector makes him take a gun, something fishy is up.
  • Bayman from Dead or Alive is seen with a gun on his hip. The Fridge Logic comes when you realize "why doesn't he just shoot them?". However, Fridge Brilliance comes later when you realize that a twenty-story fall after being knocked through a plate glass window, though an array of neon lights does about the same amount of damage as a few solid punches—bullets would be a downgrade. Besides, weapons aren't allowed in fighting tournaments.
  • Devil May Cry:
    • Vergil thinks Guns Are Worthless and, in the universe of Devil May Cry, he might just be right: his magical throwable swords do a lot more damage than most of his brother's guns. Still, near the end he picks up one of his brother's pistols, stating that he'll "try things your way for once" as he and Dante pull of a Combination Finishing Move. Bear in mind that Dante's pistols, while they may take longer, can kill any enemy in the game. Including Vergil. They're usually the way to kill things that won't carry a high risk of you getting swiped by a cheap shot.
    • In Devil May Cry 4, Nero is the only member of the Order of the Sword who uses a firearm. Fitting to their name, the other members only use swords as they feel guns are dishonorable.
  • In Dead Estate, Fuji and Digby will not pick up guns for their own reason (Fuji is a wrestler who prefers punching things and Digby is a kid who's afraid of firearms) and thus are restricted in their weapons (Fuji will only use fist weapons while Digby will only use melee weapons or non-ballistic ranged ones), automatically recycling guns/explosives into cash.
  • Fate/Grand Order:
    • Caster class Servant Anastasia understandably has no love for firearms after she and her family were executed by firing squad, though this hatred extends to "cruel soldiers" in general.
  • Downplayed in Fear & Hunger: Termina. Several characters, including Marina, Abella and Marcoh, show a distaste towards guns; however, the player may choose to equip most of them with guns regardless to help them survive in Prehevil, in which case they'll readily go against their values. O'saa, on the other hand, will refuse to use firearms under any circumstances.
  • In Far Cry 5, Jess Black thinks guns are for amateurs. "Real killers" such as herself use bows.
  • Final Fantasy VII:
    • Cloud states a series of shooting murders wasn't committed by Sephiroth because he "wouldn't use a gun." The reason for this is most likely arrogance, as Sephiroth goes out of his way to use a six-foot-long katana just because no one else can. Sephiroth cuts through skyscrapers with ease using said ridiculously long katana (officially it's 2.5 meters/8 feet long), one-handed. He also fires energy beams, uses all kinds of game breaking magic, and is stated by Word of God to be the single most powerful being in the FFVII universe. A gun would be a downgrade.
    • Not to mention that guns are particularly worthless in that universe, and not just in gameplay: In Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, Cloud takes a bullet at point blank to his forehead and all it does is break his sunglasses and leave a scar — although fanon has it that the shot was never intended to kill in the first place. That, or he has really tough sunglasses.
  • Cassandra from Gemini: Heroes Reborn has an aversion to guns after an accident that claimed her parents' lives when she's 12, and won't pick up any firearms from defeated enemies. Then again she doesn't have to, because her Mind over Matter powers allows her to fling crates, tables, and filing cabinets at enemies.
  • In Ghostrunner, the protagonist is programmed not to use guns. When questioning his creator why, his response is that it's to prevent collateral damage to his surroundings as well as being equipped to deal with all manners of projectiles. The Ghostrunner simply replies that the Architect has clearly never been in a real fight.
  • In Gyossait, Oyeatia starts out with a shield that reflects projectiles at their casters. Later on in the game, you can start picking up much more effective machine guns that grow on trees (it makes slightly more sense in context). But to get the good ending, you must avoid actually killing anything with them (walls are fine, creatures are not). Killing enemies with their own projectiles is still a-ok, though.
  • Joey Claire in Hiveswap doesn't like guns, even to the point of refusing to use a water pistol and sticking darts on her brother by hand during dart battles.
  • Maria Kolkowsky, one of the three new potential buyers from House Flipper's Apocalypse Flipper DLC refuses to buy a house if the shelter has guns in it, saying that she fears her kids hurting themselves and she doesn't know how to fire a gun anyway. This is in contrast to her fellow preppers Ted Arrown and Lonewolf37, who are both Gun Nuts.
  • Justified in inFAMOUS when Cole can't use guns because, due to his powers, the ammunition will explode if he touches them. Zeke found the first try to be hilarious.
  • Kazuma Kiryu, from Like a Dragon, doesn't care much for guns, preferring to settle matters with a good ol' fashion beatdown though he will use them when the situation calls for it (and later instalments of the series actually give him some gun-related Heat Moves that have him explicitly shoot enemies). In the Gaiden Game Dead Souls, he reluctantly takes up arms against the Zombie Apocalypse when it becomes clear that punching them won't work.
  • Subverted by Rochelle in Left 4 Dead 2. She starts off with an open dislike for guns, but after being forced into using them to fight off the Zombie Apocalypse quickly starts to like them.
  • Faith in Mirror's Edge really hates guns, as her parents were shot dead during protests. The game rewards you for not using them, and in the second game you can't use them at all.
  • Mr. Shifty will kill people with his hands. He'll kill people with melee weapons. But never guns.
  • In Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath, the epoynomous Stranger doesn't care for guns—instead, he uses a double-barreled crossbow that shoots insects and small animals. Heck, it's the first thing he says in the game!
    Stranger: [holding an Outlaw's rifle] ...never liked guns. [snaps it in two]
  • Moira Burton, co-protagonist of Resident Evil: Revelations 2, has an almost-phobia of firearms due to a traumatic incident in the past where she accidentally shot her little sister Polly with one of her dad's pieces. This doesn't mean that she is non-violent: she will happily smash enemies' heads in with her crowbar, or dazzle them with her flashlight so her companion Claire Redfield can more easily shoot them. However, she will pick one up and use it if the situation is desperate enough to force her to.
  • Characters in Rimworld can spawn with the "Brawler" trait, which makes them exceedingly proficient at melee combat. However, this also causes them to dislike guns and other ranged weapons to the point where merely carrying one on their person gives them increasing negative thoughts.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog mentions a dislike briefly in Shadow the Hedgehog, saying that he "wouldn't be caught dead with one of those!", though this is downplayed, or at least a personal restriction, as he doesn't seem to mind Shadow using them.
  • In the Star Wars Expanded Universe games, both Jedi and Sith almost never use guns, much preferring to use lightsabers. In Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords HK-47, an assassination droid, effectively calls Force users morons because they can deflect blaster bolts with their minds yet insist on getting into people's faces with their lightsabers, rather than just sniping and simply deflecting return fire. However, the Player Characters of most such games, such as Kyle Katarn, are typically pragmatic and will just as happily gun someone down as stab them.
  • In a variation of the usual, The End Times: Vermintide has Kerillian, a Wood Elf Forest Ranger who despises "filthy" blackfire weapons like bombs. Bardin also dislikes "umgak" (a Dwarf expression for shoddy worksmanship, literally translates to "human-made"), so it can safely be put down to arrogance that makes them dislike the inventions of other species rather than any moral objection. Then again, while Kerillian won't ever touch a gun, both her and Bardin will still be pragmatic enough to use bombs, they just bitch about them.
    • In Vermintide II, as a Grail Knight, Kruber will refuse to use any "unchivalrous" weapons including most of his trusty firearms - though again, bombs are still fair game.
  • Rochelle at the beginning of the Dead Center campaign in Left 4 Dead 2 expresses that she doesn't like guns but is willing to put up with it and use them because the zombies themselves are far worse. She slowly gets used to using guns and even expresses delight upon seeing a gun stores full of guns and having trouble deciding which one to pick.

    Visual Novels 
  • Ace Attorney:
    • Detective Gumshoe briefly mentions that he doesn't like guns, and only uses his in emergencies, because he finds them dangerous.
    • Although it's never said outright, or really shown outright, Edgeworth himself always acts rather causally around guns, often commenting on how easy it is to take someone's life with just a pull of a trigger. This is completely justified given that for 15 years he thought he had accidentally shot and killed his own father while he was only 9.
  • In Collar × Malice, Sasazuka refuses to carry a gun despite everyone in Shinjuka being allowed to. His primary motivation in solving the X-Day Incidents is so he could reinstate the Swords and Firearms Control Law and had a breakdown when he thought Ichika was shot. He eventually reveals to Ichika that why he hates guns so much because when he was living abroad in the United States, he saw his mother being shot and killed in front of him.
  • Much like the Die Hard example above, the reason why Ed from Policenauts can't use a gun anymore is because long ago, he shot and killed a Narc user named Ridley, who was revealed to be Tony's brother, right in front of Marc. However, in the climax, Ed saves Jonathan from being shot by Gates by shooting Gates in the head.
  • Grisaia Series: Though not denying their usefulness or advantages, series villain Heath Oslo is not particularly fond of firearms, since their straightforward and simplistic nature makes them predictable and once they run out of bullets, they are just oversized clubs. He much more prefers knives and other bladed weapons.
  • The Takamachi family in Triangle Heart 3: Sweet Songs Forever despise guns and only use swords. Which puts Kyoya Takamachi at odds with Ellis McGaren, who despises swords and only uses guns.

    Webcomics 
  • A narrator in one of the exposition pages for Finder's Keepers (2008) says most magic folk prefer not to use guns specifically because it's actually safer that way. Magical creatures on the other side of the void are more likely to attack a gun-wielder on sight simply because of how dangerous the weapon is, as compared to, say, a sword.
  • Purple Hyacinth: Kieran is an excellent shot, but he refuses to use guns. It's nothing to do with their lethality, however; he simply feels that it makes killing too easy.
  • During the Nanobots arc of Sluggy Freelance, Dr. Schlock ran out at a critical moment in a rescue mission. Bun-bun dispatched Sam the Vampire (the Sampire!) to retrieve him, and gave him a gun. Sam's response: "Sam doesn't do guns." Bun-Bun made him take it anyway, which was fortunate, as Schlock had decked himself out in crosses and holy water. Sam proceeded to shoot Schlock in the leg, forcing him to give Sam permission to enter.

    Web Original 
  • Whateley Universe: Sensei Ito: Being a martial artist, he used to not use guns. Then one of his sparring partners beat him by pulling a gun on him in the training room and shooting him with a paint round. He got over his aversion to guns real fast, after that.

    Web Videos 
  • Brady, the host of Overanalyzing Creepypasta has stated that he does not like guns.
  • Toucan Dan in Monster Factory is very much against gun violence, despite being equally brutal with other weapons. In fact, his anti-gun campaign causes every gun owner in the world to tie their guns to big balloons and send them floating away

    Western Animation 
  • In Babar, none of the animals like or use guns for obvious reasons (they're all hunted species, to say nothing of how they don't have fingers to operate them), including the rhinos.
  • Carmen Sandiego prides herself on using stealth, cunning and high-tech gadgetry to accomplish her criminal activities and considers the use of any brute force, especially firearms, to be unsporting. Add to that the fact that she actively strives to avoid any collateral damage to anyone in her operations, including the ACME Junior Detectives sent to apprehend her.
  • DC Animated Universe:
    • As mentioned above, Batman (from Batman: The Animated Series) hates guns, and goes into retirement after being forced to use one as a last resort. Bruce Wayne, though, is seen in one episode participating in target shooting. Well, he does have to keep those Grapple-Gun skills sharp.
    • Bruce Wayne invokes the trope by name in the Superman: The Animated Series episode "The World's Finest", which Lex Luthor tries to persuade Bruce to allow him use the robots they were developing together for military purposes. Bruce tells him "I don't like guns".
    • There's a very interesting Justice League episode, "Dead Reckoning", in which Deadman possesses Batman and kills Devil Ray with a gun (in a split-second reaction to save Wonder Woman's life). Batman is visibly disgusted afterwards at having any part in killing someone with a gun, even to save a friend.
    • It's subverted in an episode taking place in an altered timeline—a resistance fighter Batman grabs a gun and points it at the League, thoroughly convincing them that something has changed the timeline.
    • In the Justice League finale, Luthor offers Batman his spare pistol when he runs out of batarangs. Batman declines, saying "Not my style."
    • Virgil Hawkins in Static Shock; his mother, Jean, was shot and killed while on her job as a paramedic during a city wide riot. And to make things worse, one time, his best friend Richie Foley was accidentally shot in the leg by a bullied student who wanted to use his father's gun to kill his bullies.
  • After a Very Special Episode of Gargoyles where he almost kills Elisa by accidentally shooting her with her own gun, this becomes a defining trait for Broadway and he tends to crush guns he encounters. In an interesting case, his hatred of them stems from his own misfire rather than the weapon itself; Goliath obliquely mentions in the first episode that the gargs obviously don't have problems killing invaders (like the Vikings) if they can't avoid it. Broadway will, however, leave guns be in the hands of responsible people like Elisa—he only destroys those their enemies (usually petty criminals) are using because they use them to hurt people. The moral of the episode wasn't "guns are bad", it was "guns need to be handled responsibly", something both Broadway and Elisa agree upon at episode's end, and Elisa always locks her gun away from that point on, to emphasize not leaving it around where someone who is irresponsible or ill-intentioned can reach it.
  • Subverted on Jonny Quest: The Real Adventures. Johnny and Jessie have cornered a bad guy who drops his gun. The villain worries for a moment that Jonny will pick up the gun and use it, but Jonny tells him that he doesn't like guns. The villain smirks... for a second, until Jessie points the gun at his head, saying "I, on the other hand, don't have a problem with them."
  • In Miraculous Ladybug, the Lucky Charm that Ladybug gets to use against Malediktator ends up being a BFG, which she swiftly tosses to the ground in disgust, declaring that there's no way she'd use one of those. But not before she breaks off the laser sight that came with it, which turns out to be what she actually needed.
  • An amusing scene in the American Street Fighter animated series had Guile given a license to acquire weapons. Being a manly man, he crushes it in his fist and declares "Guns are for wimps!" Just a reminder, Guile is in the U.S. Air Force. Other depictions of him never show him hating guns, though since the series is all about hand-to-hand combat, it's more of a Hand Wave than anything else. Then again, per the rules for the Street Fighter RPG (and mentioned in the infamous Murphy's Rules column), Guile doesn't know HOW to use the things. For extra irony, the Street Fighter action figure line that was being produced at the time and based on the cartoon gave all the figures, Guile included, massive guns and missile launchers (the action figures were produced by Hasbro and reused accessories from G.I. Joe toys).
  • In The Venture Bros., Brock Samson doesn't seem to be a huge fan of 'em, going so far as to outright refuse to even touch one during his OSI exam. Later seasons justify it as his attempt to avoid escalating things with the Guild by limiting his weapon and is not above using things like grappling guns or paintball guns (of which he's extremely proficient with). That isn't to say that Brock is less dangerous without a gun, because he's not. He's also reasonable enough that he will try to find a gun if the situation calls for it.

 
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Alternative Title(s): Gun Hater, Does Not Like Guns, Guns Are For Wimps

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Broadway

Having accidentally hurt Elisa with one, Broadway has since developed a hatred for them.

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5 (24 votes)

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