In the book’s opening scene, Avis finds a gun that was hidden within her reach, and the symbol serves to indicate how violence may be present in all of our lives—even if we don’t know it. Avis must make a decision, and ultimately, she is unable to use it to harm Jim, who has harmed her emotionally. From Chapter 1 onward, guns appear frequently. Many of the central and peripheral characters are soldiers or police officers, and the main conflict and climax of the story are centered around Nate shooting Bashkim’s mother with a gun. The fact that a gun is central to this pivotal moment in the novel reflects the level of power this object has to change the lives of those involved.

Guns in this novel represent destruction, a device that threatens families, as seen in Avis’s memories of Sharlene’s abusive boyfriend whose gun is used to nearly kill the family and in Luis’s killing of the Iraqi boy and the boy’s mother’s grief. The symbol of the gun is used to reinforce the toxic masculinity in this book, where a man who can’t control his emotions exerts his power through deadly force, with fatal consequences.