What's The Most Effective Way to Deflate Anti-Gun Hysteria?

Take someone shooting. My experience is that most people who are hostile to guns realize, after they have had a chance to fire one, that they don't cause bad thoughts to go into your head--and they also realize that being able to defend yourself is empowering. This article by a gay liberal Ohioan really captures it well:

In a nondescript business complex off Interstate 77 in Broadview Heights, across the street from Radio Disney and a block away from a daycare, I've got my hands wrapped around a piece, finger on the trigger. When I awoke this morning, my irrational anxieties led me to dress as heterosexually as possible. After all, what do you wear to your first time at the range? I've chosen jeans, an orange ringer T and a green zip-up sweatshirt, a combination seemingly straight enough to pull off this charade.

To my right, in the next stall, a weapon fires powerfully, a sound that pierces through both my headphones and earplugs. I have no idea if the comically small revolver I'm gripping will create the same blast, but I'm about to find out. With my feet spread wide and arms rigidly stretched forward, I — a show tune-loving, Democrat-voting homosexual — am mere seconds from pulling the trigger on this instrument of death, something I vowed I would never do.

Yet here I am. The gun's hammer is cocked back, my eyes are fixed on the target downrange, instructor Jim is standing expectantly over my left shoulder, and the time has come for me to fire this .22.

How the hell did I get here?

It is well worth reading.