In my experience it really just comes down to doing work in them. I started programming with Java and initially found it difficult to break the OO style when moving into functional languages. What I ended up doing is just finding a personal project and committing to doing it in a new language. Years later, I find that my thoughts are tailored to the problem rather than the language. You can't really learn a language from a book or the docs, you have to actually do it.
I don't actually own a gun, and have never shot one, but I think the quick response to blame America's gun culture for the current string of shootings is a problem. Don't get me wrong, every death that happens at the hands of an active shooter is a tragedy, but banning guns and pretending like they don't exist feels the same as removing the stove from someones house because it might cause a fire. The gun itself is just a tool and given the fact that America is built on the idea of "freedom" to do what you want it feels as though this violates some intrinsic value we have.
I also dislike how everyone uses these events to push their own agenda. Liberals blame guns, conservatives blame mental illness/video games/bullying ... etc. The truth is that the issues are all a combination of these things and dealing with only one of the features won't do any good.
Some great points. It is always important to remember that everyone has an agenda (especially in the current era of "fake news"). If we need to be skeptical of news seem on Facebook and other common places, why not be skeptical of things on Hacker News ... etc. One more current example (related to non-hacker news) would be that I've yet to see anything in the "trending" news section on Facebook about the Cambridge Analytica fiasco. Just shows that they curate that for their agenda.