Danger at Home

Ahlan wa Sahlan.

MAGINE VISITING a country where there are more than two guns for every three people, which suffers 45 murders and manslaughters a day, which has 70 active militias and 16,000 gangs in 800 cities, which has been at war with someone for most of its existence, and where the elected president has a 1-in-4 chance, historically, of being killed, wounded or shot at.

But you don't have to imagine, you already live here, in the United States. And the figures above, taken from the FBI and Robert Young Pelton's book, "The World's Most Dangerous Places," are a way of putting travel risk in perspective.

Foreign destinations are often no more fraught with risk than home, sweet home.

Seattle Times