By: Ming Sun

There has been rising mistrust among Americans recently. A woman in New York was shot dead after pulling into the wrong driveway, two Texan cheerleaders who got in the wrong car in a supermarket parking lot were also shot, and a Kansas City teen who mixed up two street names was met by the same fate when he rang the wrong doorbell (The Washington Post). These unfortunate incidents are the results of mass paranoia in American society – a concept that describes the increasing suspicion Americans have of strangers even pulling into their driveway or ringing their doorbells. Although this paranoia has been causing damage in the form of snap violence and shootings, others have benefited from it.

One such individual is Tony Thurman, the owner and lead salesman at Shield Security Systems of Kansas City. Thurman’s small business boomed after the pandemic and sales have been rising steadily ever since (The Washington Post). But this growth in the home security industry troubles Thurman because he is aware that the paranoia fueling this growth is causing violence. Thurman also recognizes the racism backing much of the recent violence – the Kansas City teen that got shot was black, and Thurman knows that social minorities are more likely to be perceived as threats in certain neighborhoods. This paranoia even has Thurman, a black man, preparing to duck and dive when visiting new clients, as some people are just “itching to [shoot people],” in the words of Joe Howard, one of Thurman’s top referrers (The Washington Post).

This growing mistrust among the masses is accentuated by popular media including true crime books and podcasts, news outlets, and social media posts that tend to focus on crimes. Although crime rates in most of the US have been dropping since 2020, Americans are increasingly arming and fortifying themselves for peace of mind, with gun sales reaching new records (The Washington Post). Some people, like Kelli Cox, a 45-year-old mother of three, have children and loved ones that they want to protect. These are the people that have fortified their homes with advanced security systems, even when they aren’t necessary.

Among all this paranoia, the best strategy for any home security salesman should be to feed into the fear of their clients and tell them that they will need the extra cameras just in case. But Thurman is different, he chooses instead to be what he calls the “honest salesman” (The Washington Post). Instead of partially lying to his clients by telling them they need security measures they don’t, Thurman tells them the truth, even if it cost him sales, but this approach builds trust and garners him a lot of referrals. In the paranoid climate that America is in right now, people like Thurman help to calm the public down, and hopefully one day the trust between people will mend.

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