I've got to set your friend and you straight here. *The number of children who are abducted and murdered by non-family every year is about 100. *Given that there are about 74,000,000 (74 million!!) children between 0 and 17 in the US, your estimate of "only 1% to 2%" is a monumental-titanic exaggeration of epic proportions. *I can't in good conscience let you walk around thinking this way. *
Consider this: . *How many new missing child cases do we follow on here in a week? How many of those turn into non-caregiver-murders (or never recovered). *Two a week? That would work out to be about 100 in a year. *Remember, I'm not talking about all the kids who are murdered by their own parents or step parents or other close person, because keeping them from riding their bikes in the driveway, cul-de-sac, or the whole subdivision, wouldn't prevent those murders anyway. *To quote you, we are talking about kids who go missing and are killed
Okay, so, we've got about 100 out of 74,000,000 that's .000014% of all the kids in the US. *
1% means 1 in 100. *
.000014% means 1 in 7 million, 4 hundred thousand. *Just 1.*
And you would be willing to put your child in a cage to prevent this? *I hope you're exaggerating out of your sense of fear. *I wonder though. *How fearful are you when you drive your child in your vehicle? *I'm sure you use proper and age appropriate safety restraints, like me. * Consider: * About 115 people die every day in vehicle crashes in the United States -- one death every 13 minutes. *Are you going to put your son in a cage to prevent him traveling by motor vehicle?
It's worth considering too, in your lifetime, how many people do you personally know who were killed in a car accident? *Now, if you think about it, is it a pretty small number? *Consider then, the likelihood of your son being abducted and murdered. *It's pretty low. *Almost irrelevant, and really irrelevant compared to the risk of riding in a car. It's just rational to try to keep things in perspective.