Respect and anxiety: Guns as ambiguous symbols for criminally involved youth in Sweden

Abstract

Youth gun violence has surged in Sweden recently. Quantitative studies have described the prevalence and geographical locations of gun violence, but little research has examined how perpetrators and victims themselves experience and make sense of guns. This article draws on ethnographic interviews with young men who have firsthand experience of gun violence in a criminal context. Drawing on narrative analysis, it shows that guns are given multifaceted significance by the research participants and featured both implicitly and explicitly in their stories of their everyday lives. Guns were portrayed ambiguously, as a drastic means of self-protection that could also be used to remedy strained relations. Moreover, guns were presented as a means to build a reputation and gain respect. Gun violence was also charged with a range of emotions, notably hate, fear, and numbness. Even though young men considered that obtaining and using a gun could be justified, they also lamented the shootings, especially those committed by younger, putatively naive individuals.

Introduction

Sweden has seen a sharp rise in gun homicides in criminal groups over recent years, and the number of lethal shootings is very high by comparison with other European countries (Hradilova Selin et al., 2024). While other types of homicide (i.e. intimate partner violence) are declining in Sweden, the problem of gun homicide appears to have become embedded in criminal milieus across the country (Hradilova Selin, 2021; Khoshnood et al., 2023; Sturup et al., 2018a, 2018b). In general, both the perpetrators and victims of shootings are men who are under the age of 35 (Rostami et al., 2018). Most shootings take place in large cities (Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö) and predominantly in so-called “vulnerable areas” (Utsatt område), a term applied by the Swedish police to designate neighborhoods with high rates of crime (Swedish Police Authority, 2019). Several risk factors have been linked to these neighborhoods, including segregation, socioeconomic exclusion, and high unemployment combined with a lack of both resources and public support for the police and social services (e.g. SOU, 2021; Swedish Police Authority, 2019). The majority of shootings have been defined as gang-related, or as being linked to criminal groups in some way (Rostami, 2017; Vesterhav and Korsell, 2016). These groups often consist of loose networks of friends with immigrant backgrounds, which are connected to certain housing areas and to specific central individuals (e.g. Rostami et al., 2018; Salihu, 2021). While minority youths occupy a significant role in street culture in Sweden, research has also shown that ethnic minorities and racialized groups face widespread stigmatization, and they feel disproportionately subjected to police scrutiny compared to other segments of the population (e.g. Wästerfors and Burcar Alm, 2020).

The police (NOA, 2017), the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (Hradilova Selin, 2021; Jönsson and Nilsson, 2019), and others (e.g. Gerell et al., 2021; Sturup et al., 2018a, 2018b) have all noted a shift in the dynamics and norms associated with criminal networks. Until a few years ago, gang conflicts were typically resolved by means of nonlethal violence, and the use of firearms was rare. Today’s gun violence is relatively widespread, sometimes carefully planned, sometimes more spontaneous. More frequently than before, the aim is to kill rather than merely intimidate enemies (NOA, 2017).

The purpose of this article is to examine the understanding and role of guns among criminally involved youth in the city of Malmö, Sweden who have firsthand experience of gun violence. Drawing on narrative theory and narrative methodology (Fleetwood et al., 2019; Riessman, 2008), we examine the meanings of guns and the significance they play in oral narratives relating to disputes and tensions in criminal environments. We argue that knowledge about the stories and meaning-making that surround guns is essential to achieve a better understanding of the culture of gun violence in contemporary Sweden.

Guns and gun violence

Guns are a powerful cultural symbol laden with conflicting emotions and meanings (Mencken and Froese, 2019). Historically, they have been regarded as necessary tools in the wilderness, colonies, and war zones. They have also been associated with masculinity, hunting, sports, “fun,” and, more recently, self-defense (Stenross, 1990; Yamane, 2017). Despite the symbolic centrality of guns in countries across the world, the majority of research on guns has drawn on quantitative methods to investigate the prevalence, causes, and consequences of gun violence. Comparatively few studies have focused on the meaning of the gun as a symbol.

Studies of street culture and gangs have shown that street violence is closely connected with processes of exclusion, marginalization, and ethnic discrimination (e.g. Bucerius, 2014). Some studies touch on the theme gun violence (e.g. Wright and Decker, 1997) and explore the cultural meanings and experiences associated with guns. A widely referenced study by Bjerregaard and Lizotte (1995) found that the increased availability of more sophisticated guns in US gangs influenced the norms and behaviors of gang culture, and that access to weapons made gang conflicts more deadly. Similar observations have been made in the Swedish gang context, where guns have come to constitute a central symbol and their availability is making conflicts more deadly (Hradilova Selin, 2021; NOA, 2017; Öberg, 2020).

In studies of gun violence among youth, guns have been interpreted as a symbol of respect, power, and fearlessness. In a study on Afro-American and Latino youth, Wilkinson (2003) has shown how guns carry symbolic meanings linked to power and control, as well as status and identity. Guns were used for personal safety and for other strategic purposes. Similarly, Harcourt (2006) has shown how guns hold a passionate grip over many youths, and guns were found to be seductive objects of desire that were both dangerous and attractive symbols at once. Furthermore, Harcourt shows that guns have a central role in the street economy and holds an important exchange value. For example, guns are traded as a commodity and exchanged for money and drugs (Harcourt, 2006).

Being socialized into a gang involves a process of learning a set of informal rules of behavior—sometimes referred to as “the code of the street” (Anderson, 1999)—which promote fearlessness in the face of danger and readiness to use violence in defense of one’s honor or reputation. Wilkinson (2003) has also described how getting and using a gun can serve as a rite of passage into manhood and the achievement of a respectable identity (see also Bourgois, 2003; Forkby et al., 2020; Rodgers, 2017). Similarly, Sandberg and Pedersen (2009) have shown that individuals involved in drug dealing with ethnic minority status in Oslo, Norway, used violence to transform their marginalized status into “street capital” to attain status, respect, and protection (see also Sandberg, 2008). Violent acts can be interpreted as public performances that can generate prestige (Kalkan, 2021) as well as ambiguous, plurivocal, and, at times, self-contradictory stories that can be used for a variety of purposes, including entertainment, intimidation, identity building, and to deal with trauma (Sandberg et al., 2015). Guns and other instruments of domination promote one’s self-image and can be used to achieve higher status by intimidating or defeating others (Anderson, 1999).

Fagan and Wilkinson (1998: 132) used Goffman’s theory of staged performances to explain how guns can strengthen an individual’s identity and reputation within a criminal environment. Guns can be a means to command attention, show off, build status, and gain respect. In Duck’s (2015: 43–44) ethnographic study of a drug scene in an impoverished American neighborhood, guns were shared among the drug dealers and stored in hidden stashes in public places. They were used to protect a dealer’s drug supply from stickups, to keep the dealers’ families safe, and to collect payments and thereby protect one’s honor and reputation. Guns were occasionally fired in the air both to make sure they worked and to elicit fear. Similarly, a study conducted with ex-gang members in Sweden (Jönsson and Nilsson, 2019) found that gun violence is used to build a reputation and strengthen one’s position within the criminal milieu. The interviewees in Jönsson and Nilsson’s (2019) study describe a reality characterized by short-lived relationships, and a perpetual search for money, status, and respect. The study also found that whereas arguments and disputes were handled in other ways a few years ago, the increased availability of weapons has contributed to such conflicts now being resolved with the help of guns (Jönsson and Nilsson, 2019).

While there is a growing field of research on criminal networks and shootings in Sweden (e.g. Gerell et al., 2021; Khoshnood et al., 2023; Khoshnood and Gerell, 2019; Sturup et al., 2018a, 2018b, 2020) as well as journalistic reports (Cetin and Liljestand, 2022; Salihu, 2021), there is a sparsity of qualitative studies on guns and personal experiences of gun violence in the Scandinavian context. In this article, we explore what guns symbolize for criminally involved youths in today’s Sweden from a narrative perspective. The findings can help us develop a deeper understanding of the role played by guns in contemporary street cultures, both in Sweden and elsewhere.

Methods and analytic framework

The research presented in this article is part of a wider research project on crime and violence prevention in Malmö, Sweden. A total of 51 interviews with young individuals associated with criminal activities were conducted in the project. For this particular article, 11 of these interviews were selected and analyzed in-depth, based on the criteria that the interview persons had firsthand experience of gun violence linked to crime (gun crimes, armed robbery, and so on). Although the remainder of the interviews are not cited in this article, they have served to provide background information that has informed the analysis. Hence, the data consist of interviews with 11 men, aged 18–35 years, whom the police identified as members of criminal gangs with a high level of a so-called “violence capital” (Gambetta, 2009; Kalkan, 2021). Most interviewees had immigrant backgrounds and were raised in marginalized neighborhoods in Malmö. Some admitted to early involvement in criminal activities, such as selling or hiding drugs. A few interviewees discussed dysfunctional family dynamics. However, most described their upbringing positively and maintained regular contact with their families. Most of them were unemployed at the time of the interview.

The interviewees cited in this article were recruited via a gun violence reduction project (Group Violence Intervention) in Malmö called Sluta Skjut, which was implemented by law enforcement agencies and the social services in Malmö in 2018 (Ivert et al., 2020; Ivert and Mellgren, 2021). The main focus in Sluta Skjut is to target active group members with the goal to reduce gun violence in criminal groups. Through various methods, such as call-ins and custom notifications, the law enforcement agencies and the social services reach out to high-risk individuals and clearly communicate that the violence must stop. GVI is based on focus deterrence theory and implies that if individuals do not stop offending there will be legal measures and sanctions against the whole group. Sluta Skjut is also offering social support to those individuals who want to leave a criminal lifestyle. All participants referred to in this study were part of GVI in Malmö at the time of the interviews and were in regular contact with the probation service (frivården) and a probation officer. While the majority of the interviewees said that they wanted to quit a criminal lifestyle, others had been called to a meeting because they were considered “high-risk” individuals and did not express any willingness to seek assistance for their behaviors. Thus, the interviewees are not a homogeneous group but belonged to various criminal groups and had different experiences and backgrounds, but they all shared experiences of gun violence.

The interviews were conducted by the first author at the Swedish Prison and Probation Service in Malmö (Frivården Region Syd) and KRAMI (a job center as part of the probation service) in 2020–2021. Before the interviews, letters were sent (via a probation officer or social worker) to 12 individuals who had participated in the Stop Shooting project. These letters provided a detailed explanation of the purpose of the study and asked the recipients to agree to voluntary participation. Only one person who received a request declined to participate in the study. The fact that the interviewees were part of a gun reduction project presumably influenced their decision to participate in the study. Some interviewees may have agreed to participate to demonstrate to the authorities that they were cooperative, while others may have agreed because they were given the opportunity to speak to a researcher instead of meeting with a probation officer at a weekly mandatory meeting. Nevertheless, the interviewees seemed genuinely interested in being interviewed and they spoke with much openness about their experiences and lives.

The interviews took place in a private visiting room and lasted between 50 minutes and 1 hour. All interviewees except one gave their consent to be audio-recorded (but consented to be interviewed without audio-recording). The recordings were transcribed after the interviews. All information that could be traced to a person’s identity has been removed, and names and certain details have been changed.

The method can be described as involving semistructured and conversational interviews based on an interview guide with open-ended questions and themes. This meant that the interviewee was able to talk broadly and openly about different topics, with the interviewer asking follow-up questions during the conversation depending on the direction that the conversation took (Holstein and Gubrium, 2004). This method was useful because the conversations moved in different directions and provided insights into what the interviewees themselves felt to be important and relevant. The themes and topics mainly related to life in criminal groups, the interview subjects’ experiences of guns, and how they explained gun violence.

To analyze the data, we have combined a thematic and performative narrative approach (Riessman, 2008). We have tried to sort out not only the contents of the stories told but also the narrators’ self-presentations and cultural accomplishments, as elucidated in and through their storytelling (Sandberg, 2022). We began with a careful reading of the transcripts to look for recurring topics and attributed meanings in relation to how the interviewees spoke about guns. We then continued by focusing on how the interviewees chose their words in these excerpts and in what ways they articulated their experiences and arguments. In the section on “the emotional gun,” for instance, we trace not only which emotions guns were associated with but also what the narrators accomplished by means of their emotional stories and descriptions. This is a means of combining what Gubrium and Holstein (1997) refer to as the whats and the hows of qualitative data and constitutes a way of getting more out of the interviews than “reports about facts” (Fleetwood et al., 2019: 8).

It is important to emphasize that the research participants came from a “hard-to-recruit” group as a result of their criminal engagement. Some had been convicted of offenses (gun crime, armed robbery, and so on) and were currently (or had recently been) active offenders. As a group, they may be prone to secrecy, narrative embellishment, and imaginative speech acts (Tutenges, 2019). Many of the interviewees clearly performed a special form of masculinity (being tough, fearless, macho) and glorified violence. They may have exaggerated certain aspects of their stories while omitting information that they did not want to share with outsiders. Nevertheless, potentially nonfactual narratives may say something important about identity, values, and the culture within social groups (Sandberg, 2010), and our data offer new insights on the meaning-making that surrounds guns among criminally involved youth in Sweden.

Guns as ambiguous symbols

Guns played a central role in the lives of the research participants. Although the time they had spent carrying, using, or dodging guns was limited because of their young age, they often spoke about guns and with much emotion. In the following sections, we start by examining how guns can be implicitly or explicitly portrayed, as relationship-changing tools that connote power and status but also youthful naivety and inexperience. The second and third sections describe guns’ significance for building reputations and providing protection. The final section focuses on the emotions, ranging from hate and fear to sadness and numbness.

Implicit and explicit guns

The interviewees’ accounts of guns resembled, in some respects, the accounts told by scholars and the Swedish police (e.g. Jönsson and Nilsson, 2019). The accounts were generally pessimistic and spoke of a shift in norms within the criminal environment, with violence becoming more brutal and lethal in recent time. Interviewees bitterly described how members of a gang suddenly became disloyal and how even the best of friends could become enemies overnight. “It’s a new era. It’s not like before,” one interviewee said. Conflicts were often associated with drug debts or betrayal, and it was said that a seemingly small incident could easily escalate, “flare up,” and destroy relationships.

In their stories, guns often feature implicitly, as unsaid narrative agents (Presser, 2022) with significant influence on social relationships and hierarchies. In an interview, a young man told about the gun violence involved in the drug trade:

It’s enough for someone to talk shit about someone or something being wrong with the business. Why is he talking shit? Do you understand? I’m going to kill him. Nothing can ruin my business. That’s how it is.

In such statements, the gun is not mentioned explicitly but is alluded to with the words: “I’m going to kill him.” In the context of Swedish street culture, talking about intentions to get rid of somebody leads listeners to think “gun,” even though the narrator does not say the word out loud. Such associations have to do with the centrality of guns on the street. Guns are rarely seen or heard, but they are nevertheless very much present as potentialities in conflictual situations that involve perceived disrespect, disloyalty, or unfair business practices. In this sense, youth on the street used the verb “to kill” and similar expressions as cultural signifiers that point to “guns” without spelling it out (Sandberg, 2016).

In more complicated accounts, the presence of guns as relational tools served as a taken-for-granted background, a kind of standard expectation or threat. When one interviewee argued that loyalty is “bullshit” in the criminal networks of Malmö, he sketched a threatening situation and subtly implied that he himself reckoned with being shot.

No one is loyal. I was loyal to my ex-friend for two years. I could have taken stuff worth millions, but I never did. Then some weapons and stuff disappeared. I suspected it was the police who had stolen stuff or someone who lives in the housing area. But my friend suspected me. But I have never stolen a single gram. Anyone who is loyal gets shit. Everyone is fake toward each other. Fake. They call you brother, but they talk shit about you behind your back.

Despite being loyal for 2 years, the disappearance of weapons and “stuff” (probably drugs) lead to allegations and the emergence of “shit,” as this young man put it. When he briefly portrayed the feeling of being falsely accused, he drew on a shared construction of criminal life in Malmö, characterized by volatile, insincere, and explosive relations and where “millions” were at stake. In this context, a sudden argument, being beaten up, and even shootings are typical forms of “shit.” While guns were only implicit in such accounts, they were nonetheless often dramatically present.

In more explicit stories, the young men accounted for gun violence in terms of revenge and meaninglessness as well as moral decay and remedy. Guns were key to gang members’ performances of coolness and status. However, they were sometimes considered to be used too often and too carelessly, thereby diminishing rather than enhancing coolness and status. Guns sometimes symbolized the naivety and inexperience of younger actors, and their use was then deemed unjustified. When asked about the role of guns among youth in Malmö, one interviewee explained:

It depends on the people; some of them want to be cooler than the rest. These are not very big reasons. Ten years ago, you could figure out why someone was shot; the people knew what you had done. But now you can be shot for nothing.

Another interviewee echoed that gun violence in Malmö is connected with a hunt for status with young actors looking up to individuals with a longer history of violence:

I don’t look up to them. Some guys, they think they are living in a movie. They don’t live in the real world. I don’t respect anyone just because they may have shot someone or because they have status. On the contrary. I don’t respect people who have a reputation or a name.

This interviewee presented himself as seeing through the “gun show” of the younger actors. Living “in a movie” did not impress him, nor did the violent quest for establishing “a name” on the street. Even though he paid respect to the carrying and usage of guns, he also questioned and deconstructed it.

Indeed, many of the interviewees expressed nostalgic complaints about physical fights now having become obsolete, with shootings having taken their place. Physical fights, it was said, had nearly disappeared among youth because guns had become so prevalent:

If you go and hit someone with your fists, everyone will be completely shocked. It’s died out completely, that kind of fighting.

One interviewee argued that boys aged around 16 years were pestered by older boys to take up guns, making the younger generation more threatening. Another interviewee said that youngsters assumed that they could not be punished for the crimes they committed—this assumption is understandable since few gun homicides are solved by the police in Sweden (Sturup, 2021). At the same time, by committing a crime, an individual could climb up the criminal hierarchy and gain status:

No one gets punished. There are so few who get caught. So people take the chance and do something, and then you rise up the hierarchy. The police have arrested some, but it’s not even a fraction of those who should be caught. [. . .] If it was the case that people got life sentences, well, then they’d have wondered if they should do something unnecessary if they might get a lifetime in prison. But now it could be that someone has hit you, maybe slapped you, and you go home and get a gun and shoot him because you know you will not get caught.

Several of the interviewees thus portrayed guns as easily accessible tools that could be used to deal with relational trouble—even minor trouble, such as a conflict over an insult. Since the authorities arrest and convict so few, it made sense for the participants in our study to portray guns ambiguously as fatal yet banal, conventional, and logical. This is in contrast to many other cultural contexts where gun use is framed as an exceptional “last resort” (cf. Emerson, 1981).

Many accounts in our data contain a clear element of lament and criticism. This is probably partly due to the setting in which the interviews were conducted. These young men were participants in a gun violence reduction project in Malmö, and their views were colored by this fact. Even though they did account for the use of guns in relational, economic, and moral terms in their efforts to make it understandable, they also framed it as crazy, “out of control,” and therefore deplorable.

Guns and reputation

The interviewees portrayed guns as a symbol of respect and many said that owning a gun was part of building a fearsome reputation. One interviewee showed the interviewer his feed on Snapchat and stopped at an image of a guy who was posing with a gun in his pocket. While he showed the picture, he described that wearing a gun and a bulletproof vest was part of the gangster image, implying that this young man was quite successfully aspiring to such an image. Especially younger guys, he said, believe that it is cool to pose with guns and other attributes to “show off.” Similarly, other interviewees argued that guns were a status marker since they symbolize power and respect a bit like owning a fast car or a gold chain.

Many interviewees took it for granted that guns and gun-related accessories (e.g. bullets and bulletproof vests) were a means of demonstrating what may be referred to as “violent capital” (Kalkan, 2021). They were presented as conventional signs of violent experience and expertise. Being armed could also signify being in battle, framing the armed person as a soldier with Malmö serving as the battlefield. “I’m in a war,” as one interviewee said. “I have to wear a bulletproof vest. I’m heavily armed.”

The excerpt below weaves together the above-mentioned aspects: the quest for a name and the exhibition of violent competence. This young man sketched a scenario in which somebody might make someone “an offer”—presumably an assignment to kill somebody—which is then accepted to get status. He interpreted this in terms of showing competence in violence and eliciting fear among others so that the shooter can benefit from the image achieved by completing the assignment.

It’s about status. Maybe someone makes you an offer, and they think, now they have a chance to get status. And a name. Someone can kill for twenty thousand (Swedish crowns). He goes and shoots someone and then he thinks “I’ll get a name now,” and “I have to shoot someone and people will be afraid of me.” They want power. Or status. If you have power, you get money. It’s a lot. It’s mixed feelings. It’s complicated. And hard to say exactly what it is. A lot of things are going on at the same time.

Interviewees defined shootings as a way for younger individuals to quickly achieve status. Compared with older individuals with more binding family obligations, younger shooters were looked upon as detached and therefore especially dangerous. “It’s cool to shoot someone,” they were said to think.

Then he (a younger person) goes and does his job (a murder) and if he gets caught, he gets three to four years of juvenile care or prison. When he comes out, he has already served a sentence for murder. These are the ones who are dangerous. An older person may have a family and would not take the risk. But the little ones, they’re like ticking bombs. They think it’s cool to drive around on a scooter and shoot people.

Thus, the interviewees more strongly associated younger individuals with lethal shootings. Even though guns in general were defined as instruments for constructing reputation and demonstrating competence, the youth-plus-gun combination was narrated as being particularly powerful in this respect.

In their narratives, we also find a lamenting and problematizing tone. One interviewee described that gang members were looking to recruit a “particular kind” of young people, “someone who is tough, who can carry out a murder, who knows how to rob, and that person needs to have a certain charisma,” he said, “but the young ones are fragile on the inside, so they will do anything to fit in.” This kind of motivation—to commit murder just for the sake of one’s position in an internal hierarchy and having “a dead heart”—was not defined as something unequivocally positive in the interviewees’ stories.

Guns for protection

The interviewees explained that they needed a gun for protection when they were deeply involved in crime. Guns were talked about as a safety measure and insurance, which shielded against peers who probably also carried a gun. This protective function was sometimes narrated in a problematizing tone. One respondent, for example, talked about having difficulty sleeping and described how he walked around his apartment at night, looking out of the window. If a car drove by, or if he heard a sudden sound, he panicked. During the interview, he returned several times to his feelings of unease:

I don’t feel good. I think a lot and I’m on the lookout. I look behind me. I can defend myself. But I’m constantly looking out of the window and onto the balcony. I’ve done a lot [of things] in the past. So you never know.

Another person described that during a certain period, he was “always ready” for the unexpected:

I was armed every day. I walked around with two different weapons. I had four magazines on me; if one was empty, I could put the other in quickly. I was afraid . . . I knew those people were also armed. But you must always have a weapon somewhere nearby in case something happens.

Although the interviewees said that a person can be shot over a “small thing” (in Swedish: skitsak), such as an insult, most agreed that several “small things” and “a long time” should pass before someone picked up a weapon and pointed it at someone else. They felt that firing a gun should not be the first option. First, you try to resolve the conflict in a “good way” but, as one interviewee put it:

If no alternative works then, damn, there is no choice. I go and get the gun and kill him. Because you’re scared.

In the same way as the quote above explains that if you are scared you “go and get the gun,” and that “you kill because you’re scared,” several respondents also explained shooting incidents as a protective response to fear, threats, pressure, and stress. The interviewer asked one participant to elaborate on the topic of fear and pressure. Did he mean that shootings happen because people are afraid? He replied:

Yes, many have died from that. Feeling threatened . . . Pressure. Pressure. Pressure. Then you go and get the gun. This isn’t your first choice. There is a fine line. I don’t cross that line. I don’t put myself in such danger that I might kill someone or be killed. That’s it. I’ve been there myself, to be completely honest. I’ve been there when I was 16 or 17 years old. I’ve been in danger. I’ve also wanted to kill someone. But then I stepped back. It’s not worth it.

In the narratives above, the interviewees accounted for the use of guns by depicting the pressure and the threatening environment in which they find themselves. Even though shooting someone or using a gun in other ways was not considered to be the first choice, the protective and security-creating function of a gun was not questioned. What was striking, however, was the feeling of desperation that guns were associated with, despite—and because—they symbolized violent protection. We will now turn to these emotional aspects.

The emotional gun

The interviewees talked about fear, stress, worry, and feelings of being under constant pressure in their everyday lives. They described difficulties in sleeping and severe anxiety as a result of a fear of being shot themselves or of a family member getting hurt. Powerful and dreadful emotions also characterized entire narratives, as in the case of detailed descriptions of how people the interviewees knew had been shot. Graphically describing the injuries caused by a gun conveyed a feeling of fright and terror, similar to a report from a war zone.

These emotional accounts accomplished at least five things. First, they situated the narrator “where the action is” (Goffman, 1967) and emphasized both that he knew what he was talking about and that his emotions made sense. By demonstrating their direct experience of gun violence, the interviewed men articulated the ways in which these experiences had caused stress, fear, and trauma. The following account was provided after the interviewer had asked one young man how he was affected by gun violence:

I have many terrible memories. I’ve seen someone shot dead. It happened in front of my eyes. I was standing on the balcony. I’m running down. He was completely bloody. He turned pale after two or three minutes.

Witnessing such a scene can be traumatizing and the telling of it may be understood as a way to share the burden of the memory with others (Tutenges and Rod, 2009: 365) while justifying the narrator’s feelings of fright and terror. The graphic depictions of shootings and murder were generally deeply emotionally charged with the gun featuring as an “emotionally charged symbol” (Tutenges, 2023: 98) of significance for the way the interviewees understood and navigated their lives.

Second, emotional accounts could also convey a sense of being blunt or blasé. The scenes described could be dramatic, but the narrators could still portray themselves as paradoxically unemotional and detached, as if strong feelings were combined with a sense of distance. One man described a rather terrifying scene following a shooting incident that had taken place a few years earlier. The scene was “complete chaos,” he said, and “the police were there, pointing with their guns.” He described one victim in particular in agonizing terms:

I get flashbacks. Lots of shots. The chest (of the victim) was completely open. So it was so awful. He was completely lifeless. He was completely lifeless. It was horrible. But it felt like I did not feel anything that day. I got chills at first but thought, what should I do? [. . .] We were interrogated by the police for several hours.

It was hard to erase the event from his memory, this interviewee said, and it had caused him much anxiety, but still “it felt like I did not feel anything that day.” Another interviewee said that having lived under stress and “a lot of shit” for a long time because of guns, he “no longer feels anything.” Thus, even though guns were narrated as being a device for terror, they also functioned as a device for numbness, as if all these shootings were associated with a jaded and blasé attitude.

Third, some of the emotions associated with guns were strikingly moralistic. As we noted earlier, using a gun could be equated to engaging in an act of righteous defense—deplorable but necessary (Katz, 1988). Gun violence could be defined as morally indispensable, as a necessary means to “stand up” for oneself and do the “right” thing, like Katz’ (1988) description of “righteous slaughter.” One young man talked in these terms when he described “the beginning” of his criminal life on the street:

In the beginning, it was a lot of war and stuff; the heart was pumping all the time. I kept thinking I have to shoot someone! If I have to [shoot], how will it feel and how will it be? I didn’t want to, but sometimes I had to be prepared. I’m not a terrible person but I’ve been a criminal. Sometimes I do not want to create problems, but the problems come to me, and if you back off, you are a tit or a fool. Then no one believes in you. People distance themselves. So you stand up for yourself.

Being prepared, not backing off, not being a tit or a fool, and dealing with emerging problems: the use of guns was narratively linked to all these positions. Although this narrator underlined his confusion when faced with the expectation that he should use a gun, he did not hesitate to accept the value of standing up for oneself. The gun was narrated as being a personal instrument for moral restoration.

Fourth, emotional accounts could be centered around the devastating consequences of misdirected violence. The interviewees produced an image of dread and horror when they referred to cases in which somebody had been shot by mistake. Guns were talked about as accountable instruments for various purposes, but aiming at the wrong guy was unaccountable, thereby giving rise to feelings of shock. One interviewee described how he could not erase the memory of a young guy whom he claimed had been “shot in the forehead” by mistake:

Like the X-year-old [. . .] who died in [name of place]; he died wrong. It was the wrong person. There was another guy standing next to him who had the same jacket and he looked (the same); he saw everything. It was like this: he turned around and then “bang, bang, bang!” and then he left. And the guy who was supposed to die, he runs down and takes his phone and takes a photo of the (injured) guy. I’ve seen the picture. He’s shot in the forehead. The bullet penetrated everything and it was really awful [. . .]. That was awful.

Finally, guns were emotionally charged with hate in the young men’s narratives. The use of guns in this context could symbolize intense and passionate dislike in a way that indicated an all-encompassing atmosphere, contaminating, and corrupting, as if hate would permeate relations long after people had forgotten why this feeling had occurred in the first place. Hate could therefore account for many shootings and many deaths in a slightly mysterious way. In one interview, the interviewer asked whether many conflicts were about money and drugs, and the young man answered:

No, it’s about hate. Sometimes you dig so deep that you don’t really know what the problem is or where it comes from. It’s more that people hate; it starts with a fuss and then maybe he has a friend and then I stand up for him and so on. But sometimes you don’t even know where the problem comes from. Then there are a lot of shootings and things that happen in Malmö due to power. But the 16-year-old who died, [name of place]; it was about drugs—“you cannot sell here”—and then it was a problem. Many people say he was innocent [. . .] But he did not deserve to die. No one deserves to die.

Another interviewee described how he hates his former friends. He compared them to “rats” that are “easily offended” (in Swedish: lättkränkta) and have no self-worth. “That’s what you become like” in the criminal environment, he said, meaning that after a while, everyone starts to hate one another.

Conclusion

In this article, we have analyzed the role of guns in the narratives of criminally involved youths in Sweden who have personal experience of gun violence. Previous research has found that guns are viewed as symbols of respect, power, and status (e.g. Anderson, 1999; Bourgois, 2003; Kalkan, 2021; Wilkinson, 2003). Our study supports these findings, and we add to the literature with a more detailed account of how guns are symbolized and made sense of in the context of contemporary Sweden where there is currently a dire need to understand more about the criminal networks. As a narrative ingredient, guns tend to enhance and amplify relational dramas, intensify the protagonist’s actions, as well as amplify his repertoire of emotions. It serves as a tool for radical solutions for interpersonal trouble but also an object for social critique and nostalgia. Whereas guns are often portrayed as one-sidedly destructive and dangerous in the media, they are generally attributed a productive role in the young men’s storytelling, on the one hand creating respect, on the other hand, anxiety. We argue that without a close-up reading of narratives of the type we have presented in this article, neither social researchers nor society at large will come to understand the multifaceted significance of guns in the context of urban criminal networks. Guns have a central position in the narratives that permeate the social texture of these milieus. They have become a central part of the culture in Swedish gangs, figuring as symbols in self-representations, myths, and rumors, and in individual as well as collective identity constructions.

In some of the stories told by the research participants, guns were implicit: expressions such as “to kill” often signified “gun” and “shooting” without spelling it out. Other stories more explicitly portrayed guns and their powerful impact on the criminal environment in Malmö. As a central means for dealing with strained relations, guns were assumed to be commonplace. Several of the interviewees pointed out that many underage individuals were overly trigger-happy in their pursuit of respect. They drew on a standard narrative about the proliferation of guns as a resource: guns had allegedly become more common and were used more carelessly by children and youths trying to make a name for themselves. This development made life on the street more stressful than ever before.

Importantly, guns were charged with a great deal of emotions in the young men’s narratives. The graphic depiction of crime scenes effectively placed the narrators amid violent acts and made feelings of horror and fear understandable, but gun violence could also be associated with a lack of feelings, including being blasé as a result of overexposure to violent incidents. Standing up for oneself with the help of guns was accounted for in terms of strong moral emotions—a form of righteous defense—and was viewed as both deplorable and necessary. Miscredited violence motivated feelings of unintentional devastation in the narratives, and hate was sometimes used to account for conflicts.

Thus, guns served as deeply ambiguous symbols. They were attributed significance and narrative functions in a multifaceted, self-contradictory web of meaning, to which the narrators related reflexively. On the one hand, they employed the offensive and status-laden interpretations of guns, emphasizing that they functioned as instruments for status, respect, and demonstrations of power; on the other hand, they also bemoaned such interpretations, describing the horror that guns generate. Guns were therefore narratively attractive for the participants. They could be evoked to project an image of being tough, cool, and violently competent. They were also associated with terror, which was imbued with a pervasive sense of fear and stress.

Guns are therefore not a univocal symbol, and they are certainly not a univocally positive symbol. Participants commonly used a critical and regretful tone in their accounts of guns and shootings. Guns were used in narratives for criminal impression management (Fagan and Wilkinson, 1998) and framed as instruments of power, but many also associated guns with vulnerability, and talked about trauma, sleeping disorders, and fear. These negative experiences were seen as a consequence of living in a context in which homicides and gun violence constitute a more or less constant threat.