I've lived in a big city for years now. Never seen anybody get mugged, or shot, or carjacked, despite doing activist work that often has me visiting poor minority neighborhoods.
The only time I ever really felt uneasy was when I had to walk alone at night through a neighborhood where all the businesses had bars on the windows. Worst thing that happened was a couple of people asking me for money, and they didn't give me any shit when I said I didn't carry cash.
But any time I visit the small town where I grew up there's always someone or another acting like I came back from a fucking warzone lmao
my parents live in a pretty safe suburban neighborhood, the violent crime rate is like 1/3 the national average. the most frequent type of crime is illicit drug use and underage drinking, which are just barely on par with the national average (I know these figures because I got curious and looked them up when my parents said crime was getting out of control in the area). some time ago, there was a shooting at a bar a few blocks from their house, and ever since then they act like going outside for something as simple as getting the mail is a matter of life or death. but when I looked up the news article about it, it turned out it was basically an argument between two people who knew each other that went too far. now I'm not saying it's okay what happened, but I don't think an isolated case like that is cause for alarm.
A guy I knew told me about his dad that lives in a DC suburb. Presumably a nice one since he has a fancy job. His dad heard "a drug deal went down" in the area, so he bought a gun. "to protect his daughter", my friend told me. I don't know the guy's dad so I couldn't ask him if he thought about how having the gun in the house is dramatically more dangerous than not.
Reminds me of an old coworker who asked me how to safely store a loaded gun in a house with kids but could be grabbed in seconds in case of a break-in. I was like "uhh... you can't?"