>Long story short: pickpockets are more likely to steal in places where they're less likely to get shot or beaten should they get caught in the act. If you rea

>Long story short: pickpockets are more likely to steal in places where they're less likely to get shot or beaten should they get caught in the act. If you really think it's guns, you could look by state; I mean, here in California, you get in pretty deep shit for shooting someone unless there is a very clear and immediate threat. Most places it's pretty important that you keep your gun completely concealed. You'd probably get in trouble for simply drawing your gun after you noticed you'd been pickpocketed. But in Texas? the definition of threat is, well, a whole lot broader. But I doubt that's it. The way pick-pocketing works, from what I understand, the victim would pretty much have to shoot you in the back in a public place, and that's going to be trouble pretty much everywhere. And hell, even so, I'd rather run away from an untrained civilian with a gun than from an American cop; especially if the cop was going to put me in jail for any period of time if I was caught. I'd argue that it probably has more to do with the socioeconomic situation. Europeans have racism codified into laws in ways that only the most fringe right-wing Americans would suggest. Many countries in Europe (I'm looking at you, France.) don't have 'by right of the soil' citizenship; to become French, you pretty much have to have French ancestry. (I mean, just like America, there are processes whereby lucky or well-off people can gain citizenship... but here in America? if you were born here, you are American. that's not true in France, or in much of Europe.) It could also be enforcement, as Schneier suggested.