Why Captain America Stopped Using Guns In The MCU

After The Avengers, Captain America (Chris Evans) stopped using guns in the Marvel Cinematic Universe because he simply didn’t need to anymore. Avengers: Endgame was the swansong of Captain Steve Rogers’ decades of heroism in the MCU; after he led all of Earth’s superheroes to defeat Thanos (Josh Brolin), Captain America personally returned the Infinity Stones to their proper places in the timeline. He then traveled back to the 1940s and reunited with his true love, Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell), and happily lived out the rest of his days – presumably, also free of using guns.

After repeatedly being denied service in the US Army during World War II because of his 4F status, Steve Rogers was recruited into the Strategic Scientific Reserve (SSR) in 1943 by Dr. Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci). Steve became the first – and, at that point, only – test subject of Erskine’s Super Soldier Serum, which transformed the sickly Rogers into a paragon of human perfection. Because Erskine was murdered by Hydra, denying the Army’s plans for an army of super-soldiers, Rogers was turned into a performer for a USO fundraising tour and given the costume and name of Captain America. Eventually, Rogers did see action in World War II’s European theater, where he joined the Howling Commandos and his best friend, Sgt. Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), to wage numerous battles against the Nazis, Hydra, and the Red Skull (Hugo Weaving). In 1945, Steve was lost in the arctic ice and presumed dead, but he was found cryogenically frozen and revived in 2012, just in time to join the Avengers in repelling the Chitauri invasion of New York City.

Captain America’s primary weapon is his Vibranium shield but, as a trained soldier, he has also used guns – he just stopped after Captain America: The First Avenger. During World War II, Rogers alternated between hurling his shield and shooting at his enemies with his Colt M1911A1 pistol, the sidearm he was assigned by the Army. At his army base, Camp Lehigh, Steve trained with an M1 Garand rifle, although he wasn’t seen using this weapon in actual combat. During his USO tour, Captain America hefted a Thompson submachine gun but he didn’t actually fire the weapon during the performances. Captain Rogers was certainly proficient in the use of firearms, as well as grenades and other weapons of war, but the only time he was seen firing a gun after World War II was during The Avengers when he took a rifle from one of Loki’s (Tom Hiddleston) mercenaries attacking SHIELD’s Helicarrier to defend Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) as he started the ship’s propellers.

Rogers abandoned using guns entirely and he never picked up a firearm during Captain America: The Winter Soldier, not even when Hydra’s STRIKE teams or the Winter Soldier himself were shooting at him. This is because when Steve joined SHIELD after The Avengers, he developed into a far superior hand-to-hand combatant; Rogers quickly mastered several martial arts disciplines, as Batroc (Georges St-Pierre) discovered when they clashed. Captain America also became even more formidable at using his shield as a ranged weapon, especially since it doesn’t seem to “follow the laws of physics at all”, which Spider-Man (Tom Holland) pointed out in Captain America: Civil War.

But the biggest reason why Captain America eschewed guns is that he was no longer fighting a war. During World War II, guns were a necessity since he was fighting an enemy army in a full-fledged military conflict. And even then, Rogers used guns sparingly. But after SHIELD disbanded and Captain America became the leader of the Avengers, he recognized that most of their operations would be waged in civilian areas like cities. Not using a gun meant he literally wouldn’t be placing innocents in the line of fire and containing conflicts became key.

What’s more, as James Rhodes (Don Cheadle) said to Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) in Avengers: Endgame, the Avengers were “all about that superhero life” and that meant not using guns. Even the non-powered Avengers like Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) relied on their specialized, esoteric weapons and didn’t use guns. Of course, by Avengers: Endgame, Captain America could wield Thor’s weapons Mjolnir and Stormbreaker, and Rogers could call upon the God of Thunder’s magic lightning. After being capable of that kind of firepower, Captain America truly no longer had need of a gun.