When we emigrated to America from England, my immediate family had to think about guns for the first time. They are rabidly liberal, believed anything their tv told them, and became strongly anti-gun. I however, have always loved guns, but didn't realize I'd never owned any till 2000, when I started my collection.
I remember trying to soften my sister up a bit by showing her how to tell if a revolver was loaded. I took out my Rossi M88 .38 snubbie, removed the Nyclads and showed her there was nothing in the cylinder. When I reloaded it, she became very upset, started visibly shaking, and begged me to unload it again. It was as though I was showing her my homemade bomb. All their information about guns came from the tv.
When she married a Class 3 guy, who basically owns, or has owned, one of everything, she agreed to go shooting a bit. The only firearm she liked shooting was a Beretta .25, and actually admitted to me she kept it by the bed as a home defense weapon.
I was all happy with this and asked her what her defense load was. She told me she used her 'bad-a$$ bullets'. They were a Winchester XTP copy. I, trying not to be a caliber snob and extinguish the smoking flax, tried to tell her there was no such thing as 'bad-a$$ bullets', particularly in a handgun and especially in .25, but she totally disagreed.
Then I found out that she kept the Beretta in a RABBIT PUPPET, so the bad guy would be surprised when she reached for the comforting rabbit and the rabbit shot him. I kind of flipped out, but she understood she would probably have only one, unaimed shot from inside the puppet, but she was ok because of her bad-a$$ bullets. She has since stopped keeping the Beretta, because, 'my husband will protect me'. Again, based on information from her tv.
My mom had been threatened by my sister's ex-boyfriend, and her husband has tried to kill her a few times (poison, drowning, electrocution), so I tried to tell her a firearm might be a good idea. One time she sheepishly and ashamedly admitted, 'Well, actually I do have a gun'. I'm all happy and want to see it. She'd borrowed a Wesson revolver with a 6" barrel that weighed more than my dog. I'm thinking that wouldn't be my first choice for a 73 year old woman, but trying to be supportive looked it over.
It was a .22, and the rounds looked 'funny'. It took me a minute to realize they were BLANKS!! Freaking BLANKS!! I tried to question her about the sense of that and she replied, 'Well, I wouldn't want to SHOOT anybody!'
That's when I took the revolver off her and gave up. Their arguments are not based on logic or reason, but emotions fed to them by the media.