big·ot
n.
One who is strongly partial to one's own group, religion, race, or politics and is intolerant of those who differ. source
It's not a "silly tactic" it's merely a statement of truth. Given how you even use the words in the dictionary.com definition, I don't expect you to run and hide - I expect you to wear the badge of bigotry proudly. You're a bigot, and you're proud of it. Celebrate it!
Every bigot has his story. From this, you made a stereotyping generalization, and have never looked back. Probably, there were others who did so but weren't otherwise criminal, but you didn't know about them and so they didn't influence your stereotype.
There are (as usual) remarkable parallels between your story, and the KKK and Brady bunch. There are certainly white supremacists, who the only black people they knew (or read about in the local paper) were criminals, hence, they concluded that all blacks were criminals, and that they should be sent away, separated, or otherwise controlled; they won't listen to arguments about non-criminal blacks, because they simply weren't a part of their formative experience.
Similarly, there are undoubtedly people, e.g. in New York City, who never hear of, nor know about, gun ownership except in the context of criminal activity. They too conclude that guns are solely a domain of crime, and that there is simply no reason for non-criminal people to own them, or even to want them, and that the only people who argue otherwise must therefore have murder on their minds, e.g., NRA members.
One of these years, you might realize that bigotry is a badge of shame, not honor, and that laws enacted out of bigotry are net detriments (even though a blacks put away by Jim Crow laws were criminal, and a few people put away for gun control violations too).
But probably not.