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Comment by oezi | Hacker News Reader

Can you point to any statistics which indicate life is even remotely as dangerous in Europe as life in the US is?

I can't even come up with enough terror attacks in Europe to reach 100 deaths in 2024.

I don't need any TV channel nor statistics for my girlfriend to come home shocked because a friend of her got his apple watch and bag stolen that day, to witness a Japanese girl at an event having her bag stolen during the night, to be aggressed verbally in the station, to have a friend shot in a terror attack (Bataclan), to have an islamic attack at the Christmas market in my town, etc. all the common point here are immigrants or their descendants from non white and non Asian countries.

> I can't even come up with enough terror attacks in Europe to reach 100 deaths in 2024.

Go touch grass ffs! Your reply is infuriating to any victim of terrorism. A single death or wounded from islamic terrorism (the only that really exist) is too much already. If that's not enough for you, please line up with your family and friends and sign to be the next victims and we'll see if "not even 100 deaths" is a good thing or not.

Should we extend that "zero tolerance" principle for, say, traffic deaths? Even 1 death is too much right? Yet over a hundred people die on European roads every day. Surely we should tackle this many times more seriously than we tackle the comparatively minor issue of Islamic terrorism?

What about pollution? Kills thousands upon thousands of people too! Why are we wasting our time and attention with 24/7 news reports about terrorism every time some nutter stabs someone in the street, when we could be directing our efforts towards eradicating coal, diesel engines, etc?

See where I'm going with this?

> Should we extend that "zero tolerance" principle for, say, traffic deaths?

Many already are.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Zero

I have lived in Europe all my life. I cannot name a single person I know, nor anyone that they know, that has ever been remotely affected by Islamic terrorism.

I can however name a hundred other things that affect most of their lives daily like inflation, racism, corruption of both the media and political organs by corporate interests, degrading of public infrastructure and institutions that are not aimed at churning out a profit, declining quality of the education system to systemic stress imposed on teachers, etc.

I didn't mean to belittle anyone impacted by terrorism personally. I just am saying it is so rare that it doesn't register as relevant for me. I worry more about speeding cars.

As a society we must focus our attention to those things which really matter. Terrorism is just trying to get our attention.

I also live in a town of 4m which was impacted in the last 10 years by a single terror attack. Should it affect my life? Should I be suspicious of every member of the ethnic group from which the terrorist comes? I couldn't even identify them.

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