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> Humans are not good at measuring risk.

True in general, but in the specific case of gun homicides, the data do seem to support their concern. As per [1] and [2] the US gun homicide rate is more than 4 per 100k whereas countries like Switzerland, Sweden, France, Japan, UK, Denmark, and many others seem to have between one and two orders of magnitude fewer gun deaths.

If someone from one of those countries above expressed concern about gun homicides when visiting the United States it would seem no more irrational than a fellow American expressing concern about visiting Jamaica or Honduras because they have an order-of-magnitude higher gun homicide rate compared to the United States.

(I doubt the overall gun homicide numbers tell the whole story with regard to tourist safety, just that there exists a rational basis for this concern.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r... [2] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gun-death...

The fact that violence is higher in A vs B isn't necessarily going to mean OP individually is at a realistic risk of gun violence.

This still seems like a recipe for endless worry with little or no realistic reduction in risk.

In the end if OP is overwhelmed by this that's their call. I'm not going to tell them what they should do, but will offer different ways to think about it.

Agreed. As I said, the overall gun homicide numbers do not tell the whole story with regard to tourist safety -- assuming OP is visiting tourist-y places then the risk of death will be significantly lower than the overall numbers indicate, though possibly still higher than their home country.

But people worry about all sorts of irrational things with zero basis in fact. I'm merely pointing out that there is, in fact, a factual basis for this concern.

Personally I consider the benefits of traveling even to other countries (even those with higher homicide rates than the US) to vastly outweigh the risks. But if someone feels otherwise and avoids traveling to places with higher levels of risk then I think this would technically provide a "realistic reduction in risk".

Gun violence in the US is highly concentrated in places you'll never go as a tourist.

Agreed, that's why I said that while there is a basis for this concern, the overall gun homicide numbers don't tell the whole story with respect to tourist safety.

I couldn't find any specific numbers with regard to US tourist safety, though Australia's travel advisory does mention the high rates of gun crimes and about a month ago a couple Israeli tourists were shot in Miami Beach.

Again, gun violence would not be my primary concern if I were visiting the US as a tourist, I'm just pointing out that there exists a basis for this concern.

It's vanishingly rare for tourists to be murdered in the US. Per FBI data 90+% of US murders are committed by an acquaintance of the victim. A large percentage of the remaining 10% is from altercations that escalate to shootings.

The European preoccupation with American gun violence as it relates to tourism is misplaced in my opinion as tourists are almost never involved. Compare that to the frequent truck/car ramming attacks in Germany which seemingly always kill tourists. Should I avoid visiting German Christmas markets?

> Should I avoid visiting German Christmas markets?

Yes. Glühwein can be enjoyed in more comfortable setups anyway. If that's your thing.

Is there anything else to marketing X-mas?

This really misses the point.

Wasn't meant to be. I almost 'commute' between the .us and .de , so I do know parts of both. Maybe I should have it marked as satire, but again, it just confirms what I cited.

What's the reason to drink that stuff there, for usually insane amounts of money, while not much else noteworthy is on offer there, for similar overblown prices, while feeling tense about all the possible shit which could happen, while doing so?

Right I just meant to contrast the relative danger of the benign sounding markets vs say visiting NYC.

> Compare that to the frequent truck/car ramming attacks in Germany which seemingly always kill tourists. Should I avoid visiting German Christmas markets?

Personally I would find such a risk acceptable just as I find the risk of traveling to countries with a high homicide rate acceptable.

But if a friend or family member expressed concern about visiting a German Christmas market due to prior cases of terrorists murdering tourists there I would not dismiss their concerns as irrational or unfounded as there exists a rational basis for this concern.

I meant to contrast those things, you could be run over by a truck at a German Christmas market because it has happened a lot(relative to the size of Germany) of times but almost no tourists to the US are ever shot by strangers. You only hear about one of these things in the context of travel danger.

Yah. Meanwhile you can be robbed and/or knifed anytime, no matter where, or pushed down stairs from behind your back because pusher felt like you looked wrong at him/denied him a cigarette/your smartphone/some euros, pushed down onto the tracks of mass-transportation from the platform while a train is coming in, sitting in (front of) a cafe/diner, or being intentionally driven over by a car, steered by a madman on a mission, or simply being at the wrong place at the wrong time, while some unrelated madness ensues.

Especially in Germany.

Sure, that’s what I’m referring to in the other comment about truck attacks. Germany on average is less violent but has outbursts of random violence targeting places tourists frequent, yet no one says don’t go to Munich.

I don’t think so. In every interaction with American police there is always a chance you end up face down dead in a pool of your own blood, especially if you’re not a citizen.

Interesting, how do you figure they establish citizenship status in those circumstances?

They could ask for ID.

There really isn’t. The number of unarmed people killed by American police every year is close to 10. This happens across millions of interactions.

Whenever someone feels that travel is risky due to news stories (especially in a generally known to be safer area of the world), I always suggest to imagine that right now as you're reading a news story, hundreds of thousands-to-millions are boarding and onboarding planes at the same time, thousands of planes are in the air, thousands are landing and taking off, hundreds of conferences and events are happening continuously all throughout the country, millions of people are traveling on the roads. Try to paint that visceral picture in your mind. It helps put things in perspective.

everything seems fine until it doesn’t. those jeju air and american airlines passengers thought they were coming in for a routine landing after a fun vacation or business trip. while the odds are in theory in our favor, i can’t handle the possibility of subjecting my family to the horror of that situation anymore

Odds are very strongly in your favor, not in theory, but in practice. If you can't handle "the possibility", I have some bad news about a huge amount of way more likely possibilities of what can happen to someone simply… living.

The only reason you're afraid of some things more than others is because you came across some stories, and not others. We're all wired like this evolutionarily, on purpose. When we see stories, we're supposed to alter our behavior, because all the stories used to be local and relevant. "A bear ate Timmy near the river" is a good warning to be extra careful near there. Now that we have internet, and the entire planet's worth of carefully selected bears eating Timmys is getting fed into everyone's mind, we must learn a new trick: understanding how odds and relevancy works.

This page seems to me to have more than 0 deaths from guns: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_...

> A total of 711 people have been killed and 2,375 people have been wounded in 586 shootings

Not sure how to explain this and I don't want to imply anything about US culture cause I don't know it but it is so unimaginable to me that there were 500 shootings in one year.

Were I live we had none (zero) in the last 10 years or even more. Of course a smaller country so probably not comparable.

I'm not sure how to account for / compete with folks measuring risks via say news outlets or even wikipeida pages. The fact that there are that many shootings is terrible.

That "terribleness" doesn't mean you're at a risk that is worth worrying about, or worse, worrying about that and not something that might be far more of a risk.

But nobody can compete with purely an emotional response to bad things.

Yup, in this scenario:

Gun violence risk? Very low. Not as low as western Europe, but way lower than South America.

Risk of being hassled by some overzealous immigration officer? Much higher.

I certainly think the latter is a more valid concern as we really don't know the math on it and the capricious nature of the executive branch / security folks is, but I also wouldn't let it interrupt my life. If they turn you around and send you home at the border, I say let everyone know and do what you can to document it and so on.

Obviously the latter is more of a personal choice too. But you're also not likely to have the same consequences as gun violence.

They can easily arrest you for arbitrary reasons, and then deny you later entry to the US after deporting you - a lifetime ban.

While not as high a risk as ‘dead’, it’s pretty bad, especially if your career is heavily dependent on the US or you have US citizen family/relationships.

The biggest issue is the arbitrary, capricious, and frankly nonsensical nature of a lot of what seems to be going on.

It certainly wouldn't be an ideal outcome.

I would expand that to a general risk of being hassled, physically intimidated, or even threatened. I've personally seen (either as the target or as a bystander) a steady rise over the past decade of total strangers out in public jumping from a minor mistake or a bit of carelessness straight to political accusations, slurs, etc. Occasionally it even happens without any inciting event (e.g. based only on appearance).

> a real risk of a lot of stress for 0 gain in actual safety, or worse.

Couldn't parse this part very well. Do you mean that there is a risk of taking stress but without getting any safety in return?

But if the OP decides not to travel, then they are eliminating stress, aren't they? So they are both benefiting from reduction of stress and the safety is definitely not becoming worse by taking this decision.

What I meant is, I think if 0 risk is your goal you're going to suddenly find non 0 risks everywhere. You won't find a 0 risk safe haven (if it isn't guns it will be a gas leak, accident of some sort), and that's a recipe for endless worry / lost life opportunities and so on.

Now picking a number is a little silly but OP picked 0, but if we did pick a non 0 number and did the math ... they might find the real risks far lower than they expect / find some piece of mind and operate a little more based on reality.

I think this is kind of a tangent - surely we all understand that "I want zero risk" is technically an exaggeration. I think we can talk about the difference between "low" and "virtually zero" without getting into "there's always meteors" territory.

E.g. I'm an American, and I don't want to go anywhere (inside or outside my country) where my risk of being killed by malice or incompetence is "low", for most colloquial definitions of "low". I would like something lower than that. Feeling safe is a really big deal, especially when you have no agency. E.g. I'm happy to go on a, relatively speaking, "dangerous" hike.

I think realistic understanding of the numbers is a potential path for OP to really measure this. 0 being unrealistic ... from there you try to quantify what the other numbers mean for an individual and so on. So I think 0 is less of a tangent and IMO more of a pathway to being a bit more realistic / empowered to make the call.

I don't think 0 is unrealistic because I don't think they meant 0 mathematically, they meant 0 as when humans use the word to describe risk, which is near zero mathematically. I think it's a mistake to try to quantify this, as you suggest. That's not how humans work. I can't tell you what percentage, to two significant places, of risk I am willing to engage in for any given well-defined reward.

> That's not how humans work.

I 100% agree. I mentioned that in my first post.

But then we recognize our emotional responses and even superstitions and we think about it and sometimes by doing so improve our lives.

In the end of course this is OP's call to approach this how they wish.

Risk is all about perception. I traveled in China, and felt completely safe. In Africa, in one place I see more armed guards, and I feel less safe than in another place where there are very few guards. At the same time I follow german news and not a day goes by where I don't read about some attack, people throwing rocks at trains, busy train stations that have a weapon free zone (which is really weird since you generally can't carry weapons anywhere in public) and I get the feeling that traveling in Germany is less safe than here in Africa.

The US doesn't have the best safety record. But I think it was always like that. I don't think it has gotten worse. Only the border controls feel more worrisome now.