Who lives in fear? Stop protecting.
When you have to do all kinds of nonsense to have basic protection for yourself or your family that would not have even been necessary 40 years ago, that is fear. It is a prison. Walk down a major US city totally unarmed, a city of say of 10 million people, in the worst part of the town at 2 a.m., unarmed, and I will show you fear. That can be done easily in any city in Japan, with nary a worry. Nearly zero violent crime in such an area.