A morality tale that doesn't take sides?

The prevailing contemporary view is that this film was intended as a microcosm of what was going on in America, in real time; an allegory of the blacklisting. But this is a Western by leftwing author / producer / director who didn't do westerns, at least one of whom was indeed a committed communist. The most compelling character in the movie is a Hispanic woman, seemingly a former sex worker or madam, who runs the town. I think it's fascinating that we seem to be so indoctrinated in first amendment ideology as to not even perceive the key central theme: the inescapable depravity of guns. There are no gun heroes. The five point star doesn't absolve the sheriff -- former sheriff, to be clear - who plots and kills four men in an hour, corrupting his Quaker pacifist bride in the process, when he could have just carried on up the wagon trail -- as everyone, individually and democratically, begged and instructed him to do. All except four people: the bloodthirsty hotel clerk, who says he speaks for all those who preferred benign anarchy to the iron fist of the law; the town drunk, wanting to prove his own mettle; a 14 year old boy with stars in his eyes; and the Hispanic woman, dressed in black -- the former lover of both Gary Cooper and his nemesis arriving on the noon train.