I’d say the bigger issue for me was the fact that everyone can have a weapon with them and could literally kill you in seconds if they want to. As someone from a country (and continent) where this isn’t considered normal (the worst someone can carry is a knife and even that’s illegal) that’s just a real culture shock. Also, last time, our first day there consisted of being on public transport between the airport and our hotel where there was some crazy person shouting and trying to start fights with other passengers. We then got to our hotel, put our stuff away, heard noises outside and when we walked out we found out there had been a shootout at a restaurant around the block just minutes earlier.

So yeah, call it whatever you want but I wouldn’t call it safe.

We’ve gone to multiple places but is say the worst areas are the big cities. We visited Chicago and if you strayed a bit towards the outer edges of the downtown area it got sketchy kinda quickly. Downtown itself wasn’t too bad but at night I still felt a bit exposed walking around there with all the dark allies.

I feel like that all the time when I’m visiting the USA as a tourist. Lots of people walking around armed, sometimes visibly, who could just pull their weapon out and start firing. Any sort of public fight (like 2 people yelling at each other in a restaurant) had me on edge because things could go south quickly.