It’s totally rational to assess risk and decide if the dangers outweigh the benefits. There is a demonstrable risk, which seems to be getting worse. Just about everyone seems to know someone else who’s been robbed or beaten and thus it’s not crazy to think “it could happen to me.” Some people have a higher tolerance for the risk, like presumably most of those here down-voting any hint of caution in an environment that can be quite hazardous.

It’s not just murder. It’s every other category of crime: armed robbery (including car jackings), assault and battery, vagrancy, vandalism, public intoxication, etc. It’s piling up.

Murders are up threefold. That’s not dramatic ?

Spot on. Took my son to a baseball game in the spring and couldn’t take metro back bc of gunfire at l’Enfant. And the next game I took him to, someone was stabbed just outside the stadium. Gunfights and driveby shootings routinely now in Navy Yard. I lived in DC in the 90s and most certainly Old DC was no picnic. Close-in Capitol Hill was dangerous. But it is shocking to see the pendulum swing back in a generation.