Is the U.S. experiencing a major hit to its tourism industry because international travelers are getting scared off over concerns about violent crime?
That’s the narrative presented by USA Today, though they don’t have much beyond anecdotal evidence to back it up. The report starts with a quote from a woman who moved to the Netherlands in part because she couldn’t picture herself “having kids and sending them to school in the U.S.,” because she’s afraid of school shootings. She still visits family in Ohio every year, though, which undercuts the claim that tourists are avoiding the U.S. altogether, but USA Today made sure to mention that “Ohio’s gun laws – which allow permitless concealed carry – also give her pause.”
“I don’t like knowing that somebody I entered the Target with or the Walmart with happens to have a gun in (their) pocket,” she said. Her Romanian husband feels similarly, she added.
Sounds to me like it’s not “fears of gun violence” that’s keeping this woman from visiting the U.S more often, but fears of gun owners in general.
Amazingly, she’s not even the most ignorant person USA Today highlighted in its report.
Cheryl Jessamine and her partner planned to take an RV trip down the coast of Oregon in May, but after President Donald Trump won the 2024 election, they canceled. The Alberta, Canada, pair was concerned for their safety as a same-sex couple with the federal government targeting the LGBTQ+ community, and reports of tourists being detained by immigration officers.
Gun violence was another factor. “It’s scary for us,” Jessamine, 58, said. “I’m not saying it doesn’t happen here either, but it seems to be at least more (U.S. gun violence) discussed in the media.”
Data from the National Travel and Tourism Office shows about a 1.8 million drop in visitors from Canada in the first half of the year compared to 2024. The drop was fueled, in part, by escalating political tensions between the United States and Canada.
In September alone, the United States has seen multiple high-profile shootings, with the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in Utah and a school shooting in Colorado taking place on the same day.
Those reinforced Jessamine’s feelings. “It didn’t help your cause, (I’ll) put it that way,” she said. “It didn’t help us want to cross the border again.”
They took a September trip to Mexico for their daughter’s 30th birthday. “Originally she wanted to go to New York City, and we’re like, we just can’t,” she said.
The U.S is too dangerous, so they went to Mexico? The country with a homicide rate about five times higher than the United States?
Of course, the author of the USA Today article didn’t bother to point out the utter idiocy of that decision or mention the fact that Mexico is a far more violent place than their neighbor to the north, though they did be sure to note that the U.S. has a higher homicide rate than the Netherlands or Canada.
. They also buried this little nugget deep down in the body of the story:
The U.S. Travel Association told USA TODAY that regional analysis of visits from overseas “shows few notable outliers, with most major regions outside North America tracking within a few percentage points of last year’s volumes.”
That completely undercuts the narrative of USA Today’s report, doesn’t it?
Reporter Nathan Diller spoke to a whopping two people to make the case that tourists are avoiding the United States because of concerns about violent crime. One of them is an ex-pat who doesn’t like the fact that the Second Amendment exists, and the other went to a country that’s far more violent than the United States. The data, meanwhile, doesn’t indicate that concerns about violent crime are a significant reason for international travelers to avoid the U.S.
I’m not sure why the editors at USA Today even bothered to run this story, unless it was simply to advance an anti-gun narrative. Given the editorial leaning of the paper, that may very well be the reason. Either way, the paper’s given Second Amendment advocates a good reason to ignore USA Today’s reporting in the future.
Editor’s Note: The mainstream media continues to deflect, gaslight, spin, and lie about gun owners and our Second Amendment rights.
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