To my surprise I find a lot of people who have never been around firearms, that lack of familiarity/knowledge is what causes them to blame/fear firearms as a knee jerk reaction.
When I grew up I did not personally know anyone that did not have firearms, they were everywhere. Many people still hunted, many were not far from agriculture roots- grandparents still had farm or at least rural property. Most men had served in WWII, Korea or both so had that experience with firearms as well. As people moved to cities, they felt less need for firearms- hunting fell by the wayside for most. Many of those raised after 1950s have had little exposure to firearms, either as a tool on a ranch or farm, or for hunting. Not being familiar with firearms they do not see it even for the obvious use of self defense. Instead they fear them and have been easy to gather up to oppose firearms for those with an agenda to end rights to own firearms.
The first person I met that feared firearms and saw them as evil was a neighbor that brought her daughter to my house to play with my daughter. The girls were toddlers, needing constant supervision for a million reasons. My husband came in with a rifle one day, just walked through the house with it to put it away- and that woman freaked out and said she would no longer allow her daughter to come to our house because we had firearms. No discussion, no questions, we just immediately became evil in her mind because we owned firearms. From her rant it was obvious she had a real serious fear of firearms in general. I had never encountered anyone like that before that day but it became more common to meet, and read about people like that over the years.
It is easy to demonize that you don’t know about.
I know many such people. IMHO, you eventually always upset inflexible people, or she would have proven herself to be a poor neighbor or friend. You can have real friends, but many are simply people you are simply nice to, but that's all. Better to get it out of the way early.