Everyone has a different personality and will respond to confrontation in their own way. My personal experience is that if a person is of the mind to confront someone else on an issue, it will be quite difficult to 'talk' them down. Not impossible, but not likely. Often, the only real response to a bully is to tell him that if he wants to keep his teeth in his mouth, then he needs to keep a civil tongue in his mouth. But you do have to able to back that up. If one can't, then they should back down. But then they have the very real possibility of re-visiting that situation.
It's also interesting that a previous poster was fearful of something that he clearly does not understand--firearms. Similar to the fear that the OP experienced from his neighbor about the drone.
Ignorance=fear=irrational reaction