I think this is the problem we, as gun owners, have. It is also the largest difference between most conservatives and most liberals. Conservatives, generally, try to think logically and react to facts, in most topics. We don't make most of our decisions based on emotions. Liberals, generally, react based on their emotions instead of facts. They respond to individual cases instead of trying to generalize and build an argument for all.
This is why they are against guns. They had one bad incident with a gun and now are afraid of them. Or they never had a good incident with a gun because the news tells them about how dangerous they are. Life is dangerous so thinking people balance risk against reward and decide on their own what is an acceptable risk. Emotional people see a danger and try to eliminate it without considering any possible benefit to taking the risk or the harm from eliminating it.
A great example of this is how many of the general public see a news story about a mass shooting of six people and jump on the gun control bandwagon. They don't consider that more people are killed in shootings in Chicago on almost any weekend than in the one shooting. More people are killed in one major city than in all the mass shootings in the US in a year, even when you use the media listing of mass shootings. One incident and they react emotionally to "do something."
When you look at almost every major divisive issue in America today, they almost always come down to emotions versus facts. And until we find a way to change that very basic personality trait (or at least how we debate the issue), we will never again be a united people in this country.