As an American, I largely agree, but had a story that’s related.

We had someone in town for work from another country. He asks us if we carry our guns with us or keep them in our cars, because he really wanted to take a look and maybe go out shooting since his home country would never let him anywhere near a gun and that was like the one top “American” thing he wanted to try while he was here. None of us in the group actually had guns on us, in our car, or at home. This sincerely seemed to baffle him. We gave him an explanation much like yours, that the prevalence of guns might be a bit exagerated in the media, but guns rarely make an appearance, and when they do we generally also get pretty nervous because it’s so unusual.

Well this discussion was just coming up on lunch and so we go to drive him to somewhere to eat and we get outside and he asks what all those noises were. “Oh, that’s gunfire from the shooting range across the road, we kind of forgot about it and tune it out because we always hear it on days with nice weather”.