I’m afraid I may have somehow given you an overly optimistic impression of my ability to grasp the obvious 
They are literally trained to be paranoid, and have a hugely outsized idea of both how dangerous their job is and how dangerous the world is in general.
Well a bit of a zombie here.
My wife surprised me when she said she wanted to learn how to shoot. I’ve been shooting since 1979.
My response was basiclly “You have a lot of work to do”. And we are doing it.Table top lessons from myself for safety and just to show her how weapons work, and then to gun stores for their opinion.
Twice to the range now. And she has ordered her revolver. She has signed up for profesional lessons. That’s great.
I’ve made sure she is safe with a revolver, but she is going to take an all womens class. Taught by a woman.
It’s odd. We are very competitive in chess and darts. Her two first times at the range showed her to be quite good. So, here we go.
She is the competitive one. Though we all like to win of course.