Imagine Dragons' "Thunder" starts with a confusing verse where the singer speaks the time he was:
Just a young gun with a quick fuse
I was uptight, wanna let loose
The closest meaning I could find is "young passionate/labile leader". Is that the meaning intended by the writer?
Best Answer
A "young gun" means a "young gunslinger", q.v. the movie titled "Young Guns", or "young tough", q.v. the hip hop artist duo "Young Gunz". It does not connote leadership at all, rather being a belligerent, rules-flaunting young man, a hoodlum who uses violence to get what he wants, and is generally defiant, hostile, aggressive, spoiling for a fight.
"Just a young gun with a quick fuse" describes a young man with "a chip on his shoulder" (idiom) who is constantly about to explode in violence at the least provocation.
However! Note that in the larger context of the song, this is meant allegorically. There's a rhetorical tradition in 20th and now 21st century Western popular music of comparing artistic ambition to violence, both in talking about music (e.g. "The British Invasion") and within lyrics. The singer is bragging about his musical career: he is bragging that he has become a conquering hero of music, where once he was just a punk on the street with big dreams and willingness to rumble.