(FORTUNE Magazine) – AS MAYHEM GOES, burglary and other types of theft are declining in the U.S. But not violent crime. With daily bullet-ridden news reports of the latest semiautomatic slaughter on the streets of big cities and quiet suburbs alike, it doesn't feel very safe out there. That's why we're loading up on tear gas sprays, trained guard dogs, and ultrasensitive alarm systems, and outfitting the kids with pagers. We're scared out of our wits, and somebody is going to pay the price.

We are. Scores of opportunistic companies, including more than a few fly-by- nighters, are hustling a cornucopia of nonlethal, fear-busting products and services. Just three examples: DYEWitness, a defensive spray that blasts an indelible green foam over an attacker so as to make him easier to identify; Safe & Secure Living magazine, with features like ''Police Secrets You Can Use;'' and Security Works, a bustling South Florida retail chain in which you can buy enough sprays, locks, and alarms to create your own personal Pentagon. In the traditional burglary alarm business, industry giants like Honeywell, ADT Security Systems, and newcomer AT&T are cranking out Orwellian monitoring systems faster than you can say three-time loser. Last year 32% of all new homes were built with alarm systems. Alarm sales climbed from about $4 billion in 1986 to $6 billion last year, reports STAT Resources, a consulting firm in Brookline, Massachusetts. Unit volume has soared; prices have fallen by two- thirds as the technology becomes less expensive. Revenues from car security systems jumped 15% last year, to $540 million. For many people, the tonic has been to scurry out and buy a .38 caliber pacifier. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms estimates that Americans now own over 200 million guns -- more than one for every adult. About a third are handguns. The market for nonlethal weaponry, estimated at $300 million, is roiling with competitors trying to make a killing on the threat of crime. More than 18 million canisters of defensive sprays have been sold at $10 to $15 a pop. Almost all were bought over the past five years, far outstripping handgun production and sales. It's a rough business. Product obsolescence is dizzying. Distribution is poor. Some of these products might not work. Worse, stun guns and certain sprays may be downright dangerous. AMONG COMPANIES in the vanguard is Quorum International, an Amway-like operation based in Phoenix that sells an array of personal, home, and car alarms. Quorum's products are simple and inexpensive, like a pager-size $30 personal attack alarm that wards off miscreants with an ear-piercing, 103- decibel siren triggered by a quick pull of a pin. Raymond Hung, 46, a native of Hong Kong with an MBA from the University of Chicago, controls Quorum through Applied Electronics, a Chinese manufacturer that owns 70% of the U.S. company. Quorum's breathtaking growth made Applied a hot stock last year, up about sixfold to 50 cents on the Hong Kong exchange. Founded three years ago, Quorum expects its revenues to leap from $20 million to about $220 million for the + year ending next June. Analysts say profits may top $20 million. The security devices business has been very good to Hung. His 45% stake in Applied appreciated $130 million last year. Hung got into the business initially because nobody else was. Says he: ''A few years ago I tried to buy these products, but I couldn't find them. I knew there was demand, but where was the supply?'' After finding that retailers were wary of stocking such devices, Hung decided to go direct. He ships goods to a vast sales force of 300,000 in North America, Europe, and Asia at a 22% markup. They tack on another 30% and sell to the public. The reps, who are mostly part-timers, also recruit other sellers, collecting about 6% of the revenues of their recruits. Quorum avoids the industry's most crowded sector, defensive sprays, where more than 50 companies are fighting it out. That includes MSI, maker of Mace, the original product and the most potent brand name. Mace was first sold in 1965. The company was then passed around like a hot car radio until entrepreneur Jon Goodrich bought it from gunmaker Smith & Wesson and relocated to bucolic Bennington, Vermont. MSI, as in Mace Security International, has about $10 million in annual sales. It went public last fall at $5.50, about where it trades today. All nine varieties of Mace and other brands are made from a chlorine-based tear-gas compound called CN, or chloroacetophenone. CN works quicker than CS, or orthochlorobenzalmalononitrile, the tear gas used on crowds. A big problem: CN, which is an irritant to membrane tissues, doesn't always work on attackers zonked out on drugs or alcohol, whose membranes are desensitized, to say the least.

Enter OC, or oleoresin capsicum, an inflammatory agent that can stop a charging grizzly bear -- or a crack-crazed attacker. What's OC? Plain old pepper, superrefined. ''I love Mace fortified with pepper,'' says Wayne Perry, the would-be Susan Powter of security products consultants, who says he's taken 36 different sprays in the face. ''Give 'em a shot of that and they are down for the count,'' he says. However effective its product, MSI wasn't reaching its target audience. ''We found that 72% of our customers are women,'' says Goodrich. ''The sprays used to be sold mostly in gun shops, where women didn't go. Now we're selling to Ames and Target, and we're getting Kmart and Wal-Mart onboard too.'' Are these manufacturers exploiting the public by selling fear? No, says Melanie Lee, a Brit who runs the Safety Zone, an $18-million-a-year catalogue company out of White Plains, New York, that sells a potpourri of safety and security products: ''We're not in the business of scaring anybody. They're already frightened.'' The skittish can order items such as a mini wall safe shaped like an electrical outlet, or a motion-sensing home alarm that when activated barks like a dog. But what if you wanted a real dog, with real teeth? Well, you could call Shelley Reecher, who runs a part-nonprofit, part-commercial outfit in Eugene, Oregon, that lends four-legged defenders. Reecher's Project Safe Run, which has a 45-station network in the U.S. and Canada, provides dogs to accompany women and the elderly as they run, hike, or just walk around. The canines, ranging from Argentinian Dogos to rottweilers, are trained to defend rather than attack, and wear backpacks for holding wallets and keys. Reecher started Project Safe Run in 1981 after she was brutally attacked and raped. ''It took me years to recover,'' she says, ''but my life was still stymied because I couldn't go running alone. So I bought a Doberman.'' Reecher found that other women wanted to borrow Jake, so many that she got Sam, and then Smitty. One hundred dogs and 17,000 runs, walks, and hikes later, Project Safe Run boasts a zero attack rate. On the home front, a new wave of high technology is transforming the once sleepy burglar alarm business. Honeywell, Brinks, and ADT -- the descendant of the 120-year-old American District Telegraph of Baltimore -- are scrambling to create the latest in comprehensive control systems. ''Many home owners don't want one system for heat, another for cooling, and a separate burglar alarm,'' says Linda Whitman, vice president of home systems at Honeywell, a $200 million division growing over 10% annually. ''They want one-stop shopping.''

Honeywell's top-of-the-line TotalHome system starts at $2,000 and can run up to $100,000. Motion sensors monitored by the company around the clock detect intruders at windows, doors, inside rooms, even in the yard. The home owner can issue temporary access codes to let in repairmen at specific times in specific parts of the house. TotalHome controls temperature and lighting, can turn on appliances from the coffee pot to a lawn sprinkler to your stereo -- and calls the fire department should anything start smoldering. The entire system can be controlled by phone. A vehicle is stolen every 20 seconds -- and wags note that a false alarm must go off every two. But the R&D gang in the car alarm business is busy getting it right. At a recent consumer-electronics trade show, 63 vendors introduced newfangled systems, including one called the Smoke Defense Machine, or Dragon, that fills a car with smoke when triggered by intruders. With car theft costing more than $8 billion annually, analysts forecast years of double-digit sales growth for alarm makers. Curiously, insurance companies aren't convinced that car alarms decrease thefts. ''We're not saying car alarms don't work; we're just saying that there is no statistical evidence we've seen that alarms reduce theft,'' says Ben Parr, a car-theft expert at State Farm Insurance Cos. That's because a thief deterred by an alarm is likely to move on to a car without one -- or to a car whose alarm hasn't been armed. The next generation of car security devices may provide the proof the insurers are looking for. Called passive systems, they immobilize the car's starter motor, steering column, and fuel flow as soon as the car is turned off. Passive resistance is available on high-end GM models, including Cadillac. Unlike the home-alarm business, car security isn't dominated by behemoths. The two market leaders, Directed Electronics and Code Alarm, each with around $50 million in annual sales, make a variety of systems that are usually wired by technicians at electronic stores or car dealers. These alarms go for about $200 to $400 installed, about 25% less than five years ago. The biggest fish in car security, Winner International, of Sharon, Pennsylvania, makes the Club, a steering-wheel locking device whose advertisements featuring deadly serious, real cops are a fixture on late-night TV. Sales doubled last year to about $120 million, even though competition knocked down the price of the Club to $40 from about $60. Supersalesman CEO Jim Winner won't reveal his company's bottom line -- he plans to take Winner public this year -- but contends it's very profitable. A company in Dedham, Massachusetts, called LoJack sells a small transponder secreted in your car that allows police to track and recover the vehicle if it is swiped. (That is, if the state police become part of its transponder network. So far, eight states are onboard.) LoJack, with about $30 million in sales, says it helped clip auto theft in Boston by 30% over five years. The company claims that of the 6,550 cars stolen that had its transponders, 94% were recovered. Not surprisingly, it is our lack of vigilance that is the root of many car thefts, burglaries, and personal attacks. The five-minute trip to the Yarn Barn ends up as another crime statistic because locks aren't locked and alarms aren't set. Crime does have something in common with business: It's entrepreneurial; it seeks opportunity. And, for criminals and those in the market to prevent crime, it looks as if there will be plenty for both.