People have these ideas because “most dangerous city” lists usually mean most dangerous big cities, and leave implicit that more-rural areas are far safer.

If you start analyzing and carving things up other ways, it quickly becomes clear that the “small town and small city America is safer than big city America” thing that a lot of people assume is true, isn’t. Muddled at best, and bordering on simply being backwards.

This makes perfect sense when you consider that violent and property crime correlate with poverty, and small towns and cities tend to be much poorer than big cities. Add in that density effects mean that you might see more crime in a big city while in fact being safer than in a small city, and the picture starts to come together.