Christina Kooi moved away from the U.S. due to school shootings.
Cheryl Jessamine during an RV camping trip earlier this year.

Christina Kooi left America because of gun violence. The 38-year-old, who was born in the Netherlands and moved to the U.S. when she was 10, ultimately left the country in 2017 amid ongoing school shootings.

“I could not picture myself having kids and sending them to school in the U.S.,” she told USA TODAY. She traveled internationally before relocating back to the Dutch country. She makes yearly trips to visit her parents in Ohio, but is wary of spending too much time stateside.

Now with two young children (2 and 4), the large number of firearms is a concern. “For me to move back to the U.S., or to be there for an extended period of time, I would just be afraid to be at someone's home and have my kid grab a handgun out of a well-meaning neighbor’s bedside table,” she said.

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.

Kooi is not the only one. Some travelers are minimizing time spent in the U.S. or avoiding it altogether due to gun violence and other safety fears. Here’s why.

‘It’s scary for us’

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 U.S. and Canada.

In September alone, the U.S. 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.

Are tourists avoiding the US?

Tourism Economics, which provides industry research, initially expected 10% growth this year. Their revised forecast now puts that figure at an 8.2% fall. Their July report attributes the declining trend to a mix of policies and rhetoric from the Trump administration that has altered how potential travelers perceive coming.

“I think it reminds us that we need to be sensitive to it and that travelers have choices,” said Aran Ryan, Tourism Economics Director of Industry Studies. “Making them concerned about where they're going can cause them to shift elsewhere – so I think we need to be generally more stable as a destination.”

International arrivals to the U.S. were down 3% year over year as of June, according to the National Travel and Tourism Office. Overseas arrivals alone were down 1.2%.

According to the Tourism Economics report, the decrease in international visitors will be felt the most in some of the cities close to the northern border. Seattle tops that list with a 26.9% expected decline from 2024 – with nearly all of that attributed to Canadian visits.

Data on international visitor sentiment around gun violence specifically is scarce. However, a 2024 survey of 6,000 travelers in Southeast Asia found that more than 90% said the prevalence of guns in America influenced their decision to visit.

“Yet, 56% of those in the survey, commissioned by CNBC Travel and conducted by the market research firm Milieu Insight, said they are likely to visit the United States in the next few years,” the outlet reported. Among respondents who had previously visited the country, “74% said they perceive gun violence to be a bigger issue in the United States today than in the past.”

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."

How common are shootings in the US?

There have been 302 mass shootings in the U.S. so far in 2025, according to the Gun Violence Archive. The organization defines a mass shooting as one that involves four deaths or more, excluding the shooter. There were 503 in 2024, representing a decrease from 659 the year prior, but still significantly higher than the 332 in 2015.

A 2021 analysis by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation also found that the U.S. had relatively high levels of gun violence compared to other high-income countries, with a firearm homicide rate of 4.5 per 100,000 people. That number was 0.6 in Canada, by contrast, and 0.2 in the Netherlands.

Other countries have also warned of gun violence in U.S. travel guidance for their citizens.

“Incidences of mass shootings occur, resulting most often in casualties,” Canada said on its website, for example. “Although tourists are rarely involved, there is a risk of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Others, such as Australia and the U.K., similarly mention “gun crime” in their U.S. travel advice.

Kooi and her family are planning to take nearly a month off to travel by camper van next summer. Her dream has been to travel through states like Arizona and Nevada in the Western U.S., but her husband “is really uncomfortable and feels it’s unsafe,” she said. They’re going to Portugal and Spain instead.

For Jessamine and her family, a possible trip to Alaska is also up in the air.

“I guess we don't want to spend our travel dollars in the United States right now, just for – how we perceive what is important to people in the U.S. is not necessarily aligning with who we are.”

Contributing: Eve Chen, USA TODAY

Nathan Diller is a consumer travel reporter for USA TODAY based in Nashville. You can reach him at ndiller@usatoday.com.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'It's scary for us': Gun violence, safety concerns keep these visitors from the US

Reporting by Nathan Diller and Ignacio Calderon, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect