This chapter aims to demonstrate that rates of crime are not greatly different in the United States from those in other developed nations and that our extremely high rates of lethal violence are a separate phenomenon, a distinct social problem that is the real source of fear and anger in American life. It identifies a process of categorical contagion that leads citizens to fear lethal violence in a broader variety of settings than those that carry any substantial risk to life and limb. The chapter shows clearly that America’s special problem is violence and not crime by comparing the results of a twenty-nation survey of citizens about the rate at which they were victims of crime with World Health Organization data on death from assaults for same nations. The dramatic increase in resources devoted to punishment of crime in recent years provides a clinical case study of the impact of a general crackdown on crime on policy toward violent crime.