Feeling helpless and having a weapon is not mutually exclusive, like the other guy said the weapon's usefulness mainly depends on timing and resource management essentially and ammunition/effectiveness can be a source of fear in it's own. There could be certain horrors would be immune to kinetic or explosives and we would simply need to hide from them. Not everything needs to be solved by bullet, but having that option is always a positive. A boast to confidence in a game where the majority of the time you spend doing menial tasks and getting pranked would certainly help egg players into trying different approaches. Or they could simply get used to the one dimensional horror we have now and no longer really feel afraid anymore. Especially since there's nothing to lose currently. Who knows, having weapons could open an entire avenue of protecting friendly aliens or having climatic showdowns with that one cryptid that keeps eating your food.
Viewing post in Please, let there be many ways to defend ourselves in the future
Perhaps so. Defending the friendly aliens would be a cool idea. Though, considering we never truly see them, things would have to be really different in the future to reinforce such ideas. Possibly full on communication with the friendly aliens even, since they are trying to warn us of the coming threats anyway.