Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Introduction

I've been an opinionated old bastard for a long long time and this is my chance to hold forth about some of the strange and illogical behavior, especially media and political behavior, that surrounds us on a daily basis.


For instance - do you know how many children were technically abducted in the USA in 2002?
54,000+ .
MOST of those were runaways and throwaways or abducted by a non-custodial relative or who lied to their parents about where they were going or just involved in a mix-up about where they were supposed to be. MANY of them were abducted by a non-relative. Most of them were returned alive - even those who were sexually molested.

There were 157 stereo-typical abductions in the same time and these are a part of the above counts. These abductions are the ones you hear about on TV. The children involved in these abductions were less fortunate than the others. 50%+ of them wound up dead and 99% were molested in some way.

This means that some 75+ kids were killed by strangers who abducted them.

DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY WERE KILLED BY THEIR OWN PARENTS?
(on average, 1200 children a year are murdered by their own parents)

OR HOW MANY WERE KILLED IN CAR ACCIDENTS? (2222 children between the ages of 1 and 14 were killed in car accidents in 2004)

Hell no you don't - that's not sensational enough for the media who would have all of us running around in fear for our children being abducted by strangers.

Don't get me wrong. You must excercise caution with your kids because they are kids and make bad choices and get themselves into bad situations. That's only common sense. But don't let the media rule your life and your legislators with their fear mongering.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You forgot that most of the news reports about abductions only concern white girls.

Oldfart said...

While that is true, the main point of the Introduction was the fear-mongering by the press.

Oldfart said...

Also, while european american children are 65% of the population, they comprise 72% of the stereotypical abductions.