They are letting emotions override logic. Humans, including “conservatives,” have a difficult time coping with the fact that horrible things can happen to anyone at any time and there is nothing you or anyone else can do to stop it. They grasp for solutions. In some cases, it’s banning guns and in other cases it’s owning one.
I think that's correct. Although they are hardly immune from the tendency, I might still hope that as a matter of philosophical grounding, conservatives would be less likely to substitute emotion for reason.