Charlotte's question was obvious where it came from. It wasn't just that she saw it with her own eyes, how they tried to kill them, how they killed Rafael and Hans, but she heard whispers about the revenge James did, and moreover, she saw Vallen too, just shooting people. And in her mind… a gun, a pistol, is worth more than knowledge, and of course, these are things that she saw all her life.
To be feared, to be respected, you need to show who you are, what you are capable of doing, and for her it was a pistol, something that can take a life. That is the weapon of the mafia, weapons of the family, that is how you reach the top.
But from James's point of view, it wasn't. A man who pretended to be a mafia boss from the beginning, who never killed nobody nor knew how to shoot a gun, and here he stood, thought the criminal underworld like a prince who is ready to claim his throne, and he wanted the same for her.
