"...the surveillance that sprang up..."
"...the legislation enacted..."
"...the surveillance police state..."
These and some other things you mention are the things that seem relevant today to me. I don't see 9/11 as a cause of them though. What we see comes, by my reckoning, from less glamorous issues that have been festering since at least the rise of industrial capitalism and probably long before then. Freedom of whoever or other has been encroached by whoever else since time immemorial, 'our' governments are just mechanizing and formalizing the process in lockstep with the advancement of technology. There didn't need to be 9/11 for this to happen, it's opportunism at best.
I'm not exactly sure where the anecdote about your childhood fits in to the bigger picture, but I can certainly agree with you about gun safety. I'm not mystified by firearms. They're a tool like any other, beholden to the wisdom of the bearer.
I've no support for any president or nominee I've yet seen, and doubt I will for future ones. In my opinion the taint goes back much farther than 2 decades, or 20. At least since the beginning of western civilization we've been eroding respect for humanity. Our colonial forebears willingly dehumanized and slaughtered indigenous peoples the world over. What else can be expected to come from hundreds of years of development by the profit of such actions? Why expect the systems that established, benefited from, and reinforced this status quo to respect the humanity of people now? I don't think a national identity is going to protect anyone from this sort of abuse.
"...what perished on 9/11..."
I thought what perished on 9/11 were a few thousand human beings, not some intangible, inanimate, unfeeling ideals.