I've lived in dangerous places. North Americans take very few safety precautions. In general:
* People aren't aware of their surroundings. Often have headphones.
* People wave phones around in the air, hold them loosely, or leave them dangling out of back pockets.
* People use public ATMs, in insecure locations, and don't pay attention to machine safety or who is nearby.
* People will walk down a street with no one on it without increasing their vigilance level.
* They carry no cash to hand over in the event of a mugging
As far as child safety goes, they were never at much risk in public from strangers then or now. I'm prepared to be proven wrong by stats on that point, since I haven't looked it up, but IIRC most crimes against children are done by family or people the child knows.
I've been told the sweet spot is in the ballpark of $20 - $50 USD. But of course this has to be adjusted by location.
> * They carry no cash to hand over in the event of a mugging
Can you elaborate on this point? I'd be surprised if thieves thought, "Jeez, nothing to steal from this one, I'd better at least stab them or I won't have done anything wrong..."
The other possibility is that they might ask for your whole wallet/phone, etc. Whereas if you hand over some money they'll often take it and go. At least this is what Brazilians who had been mugged told me happens. Some carried a dummy phone to hand over as well.
However, because the US is generally a safe place, Americans can carry a weapon without much risk, because they will almost never have to use it.
You could make the argument that my statements logically extend to saying an armed populace increases larger more violent crimes while reducing the prevalence of petty crimes, and I agree that might make sense in a short-term, but criminals don't grow exponentially just because, crime is a symptom of separate social factors.
Fundamentally, there's no downside to carrying a weapon. If you don't need it, then you don't need it. If you do truly need to defend yourself with violence, then there isn't really much substitute and worse case you die wishing you'd had a weapon.
Police find a lot of money and some drugs on your assailant. They suggest that foul play was involved. A drug deal gone wrong. Under pressure you misremember certain facts of that night. The police notice a discrepancy in your story and build a case out of it.
A second danger is that you might aim a gun but not be able to pull the trigger. A large percentage of soldiers in WWII found themselves unable to kill someone, even when their life was in immediate danger.
Subsequently, armed forces spend a lot of time on psychological training to turn recruits into killers. You presumably haven't had this training, so I would bet money that you wouldn't be able to kill someone.
A third danger is that your assailant might have a gun too. In this case, the fact that you are carrying a gun cannot help you if they point theirs at you first. It can definitely get you killed if they notice you are armed.
(for the record, I didn't downvote you)
Edit: Also, I think some of the safety culture comes from diminishing returns. E.g., in the 1950s industrial workplace safety was extremely poor by modern standards. But the people who worked there had just been through world war II, so the risk must have seemed low by comparison. Similarly, the 1990s probably had a bunch of risks which we have solved now---e.g. cars are safer now, and violent crime is lower. So we start worrying about higher-hanging fruit, such as children's commute to school.