"She played Persona and decided to try it out with her dad's gun..."

Ahaha, it's an interesting concept but seriously, one has to wonder if they really thought about that when they made the game.

I'm pretty sure they thought about this possibility, but decided they'd rather push ahead with a mildly controversial bit of social commentary than worry about the possibility that someone might blame the game for some kid doing something extremely stupid. The symbolism is undoubtedly intentional, especially considering the generally-higher-than-average rates of suicide in Japan. You can see this theme of using a gun on oneself as a transformation mechanism elsewhere too, such as in Venus Versus Virus.

Yep, personally I'm glad they went with it and didn't go all pansy and politically correct. You wouldn't get something like this over here (UK) without a whole load of bleating by the PC crowd and other idiots.