“What education or treatment would you undergo to remove your indoctrinated belief that guns have magical powers whereby guns are responsible for crime and can make people commit crime?”
The short answer: Find a responsible gun owner to take you to a range and fire some guns, and you will see that they are not magical, even though they can relieve stress and bring you smiles, laughter, and happy memories. It is natural to fear the unknown, and to ascribe magical powers to thinks we fear. The antidote to that is knowledge and experience.
My experience that led to that answer: I was raised by parents who were anti-gun. I was taught that guns turned people into killers - that if I had a gun, every time anyone annoyed me, I would not be able to keep myself from shooting them.
When I first went to the rifle range with ROTC, I was terrified that having a full-auto capable M-16 in my hands would, magically, turn me into a murderer.
I found out that this was not the case at all.
I purchased my first firearm 40 years ago, when I was 18, and have owned firearms since then. Plenty of people have annoyed me during that time, yet I have never murdered anyone, never killed anyone, and never harmed anyone with any of my firearms (okay, to be perfectly honest, I have given myself a painful case of “Garand thumb” once or twice, and cut my hand while working with an M-60 while in the Army - but have not harmed anyone other than myself).
One of the things that I have found to be a great stress-reliever is to go to the range and do some “gong therapy” - shooting at 8″ steel plates and hearing them ring when I hit them. I have many friends who also find a visit to the shooting range to be a great way to relieve stress.
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