Yes unfortunately they did/sort of still do abit, but with the likes of this style, and the ELA MT03, Magni, that proving beyond doubt that the modern designed gyro is in fact a safe aircraft.
The worst feed back you get is like, my friends uncle knew someone who used to go to this blokes place and he had one of those gyro things, and he got killed in it trying to learn to fly it, no he didnt have any training but those bloody things will kill you, well DUHHHHH..
I cant work out why it is the gyro that sufferes these type of fools trying to teach themselves to fly even today, i think it is the fact that the gyro looks so simple in design, they automaticly think it is easy to learn to fly, the fact of the matter is they are easy to fly, but there is a couple of critical stages of rotor management you need to get right.