Hard science people tend to worship data and dismiss anecdotes, but a situation where the data is incomplete/incorrect (for whatever reason) and anecdotes which point in a different direction are, in fact, correct, is perfectly plausible. For example, the former Soviet Bloc was unmatched in its ability to produce impressive statistics of various achievements, but the real living standard of the people would strike you in the face the moment you would see it. Which is why the secret police often restricted free movement of Western visitors.
SF is pretty bad. A few weeks ago, Czech TV reporters were robbed at a gunpoint in broad daylight [0]. Stuff like that simply doesn't happen in Prague, Warsaw or even war-torn, PTSD-heavy Kyiv. It rather corresponds to South African standards of safety. IDK if you can explain it away with positively sounding statistics, but as Feynman says, "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool."
If a culture war coded topic like crime is being discussed and tribal loyalty kicks in, I can imagine people simply ignoring anything that goes contrary to their position and rallying to the flag.
FWIW, with more guns than people, the USA is the most armed country in the world. It follows that being robbed at gunpoint isn't something that is frequent in a country where there's only 1 gun per 40 people. The same people arguing about violent crime in the USA could do themselves a huge favor by being open to more gun control, but by and large, they are against it.
Does the pattern of armed robberies at daylight correlate with the pattern of gun ownership across the US, or no?
If not, the causality may be a lot more complicated. People don't turn into gangsters just by owning more guns. As you mention, USA is the most armed country in the world, which means that Latin American countries have, theoretically, fewer guns than the US. But they have a lot more gang violence, so much more that LatAm cities fill the "top 50 violent cities in the world" category, with barely any representants from the Old World (AFAIK only Johannesburg is up to par).
The same people arguing about violent crime in the USA could do themselves a huge favor by being open to more gun control, but by and large, they are against it.
Oh, there are multiple reasons for gun violence in the US (in decreasing importance from easy access to guns). Replace "gun control" with anything that might reduce it and this statement is still probably true.
I could just as easily list off several countries that have strict gun control and at the same time also violent crime rates (including those with guns) that are far worse than general levels in the U.S. gun control by itself isn't the problem when it comes to violence. Other, largely social and political factors are much more important, but that's not a neat ideological talking point so it gets ignored more often.
SF is pretty bad. A few weeks ago, Czech TV reporters were robbed at a gunpoint in broad daylight [0]. Stuff like that simply doesn't happen in Prague, Warsaw or even war-torn, PTSD-heavy Kyiv. It rather corresponds to South African standards of safety. IDK if you can explain it away with positively sounding statistics, but as Feynman says, "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool."
If a culture war coded topic like crime is being discussed and tribal loyalty kicks in, I can imagine people simply ignoring anything that goes contrary to their position and rallying to the flag.
[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/czech-journalists-cover...