So … the gun gives him a sense of power when he gets depressed and is feeling powerless with the direction things are going in his life?

So what if instead of this being about a cartoon this was someone getting really angry at their wife so they have to go to their office and have to “grip a gun really tight for a few minutes until they calm down”? Or maybe getting angry at their boss… or their neighbor… or the government? That’s pretty disturbing.