[johnisgood]

We have built large parks/playgrounds for kids here in Eastern Europe, and we have upgraded most of our playgrounds. There are many of them. Kids can freely be kids here still. :)

What is happening in the US is quite depressing to me. Your kid can be shot for having a toy that the cop perceives to be a gun. It is crazy! Things like that never happen here, even if that toy is a toy gun.

[9HZZRfNlpR]

It doesn't happen that often, that's the point. People are afraid everything and everyone. We euros tend to forget how big USA really is. Of course all sort of shit happens.

[llukas]

EU has more citizens than USA and it is unthinkable that such thing would happen in EU.

[Zak]

That may be true, but it illustrates an important point: we shouldn't need tragedies to be unthinkable in order to make reasonable decisions about their probability.

We don't do this in every situation. Most American parents transport their kids by car without giving the risk much thought, though car crashes kill significantly more children than homicide in the US (source: CDC). I'm not sure there's a good solution to the cognitive bias of discounting relatively mundane risks.

[psychrometer]

Millions of people go on holiday to Caribbean countries which have much higher rates of homicide and killings by law enforcement. The fact that people choose to go to places that are much worse than the US in this regard makes me think the rates in the US do not really weigh that much upon people.

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

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

[jhbadger]

Tourism in the Caribbean isn't like tourism in first-world countries. Relatively few tourists wander the streets by themselves where the local crime (and law enforcement killing) rates would be relevant but stay in resort areas heavily protected by resort staff and local police who fear the loss of the tourism economy. When a tourist goes missing or is murdered in the Caribbean, it makes world news.