You definitely have a point about Americans being paranoid. But to be fair, Spain's murder rate is approximately 0.6 per hundred thousand. The overall rate in the US is about 7.5, i.e., about 12x the rate for Spain. But actually, there is no such thing as the US. The US is an abstraction--there are only particular places. The murder rate in NYC is about 6.5, which surprises most Americans, who assume it is a very dangerous place. Still, that's 10x that of Spain. But in New Orleans, the murder rate is above 50, or about 83x the rate for Spain. On the other hand, where I live, Weehawken NJ, which is about 3000 meters from Times Square in NYC, the murder rate has been zero for many years. You can see people walking around in the city from our front steps, but there are no killings at all. But NYC is an abstraction, too. Most of the murders in NYC happen in a fraction of the land area. I grew up in Washington DC. By the time I was 26, I'd been stuck up at gunpoint six times, while in 35 years in NYC and Brooklyn, I was never stuck up or menaced. One thing I've noticed though, which is very consistent with what you say, is that Americans tend to be clueless about the realities. Over vast areas of the country, where people have almost no chance of being murdered, people are convinced by film and mass media that there are murderers around every corner. Yet, in these same areas, the larger gun death problem goes almost unremarked. Suicide with guns kills more people than murder with guns. Everyone thinks the typical gun death is an inner-city teenager, but statistically, it's a suburban or rural older white man who pulls the trigger himself. Ironically, it's exactly the group that most loudly demands absolute freedom to own guns, primarily for "self defense."