I had a relative who came from Midsomer Norton to work in the mines. He made a mistake that killed more people in a few seconds than Midsomer Murders have had killed in 20 years.
I sense that eyebrows were raised by my comment about knowing murderers and murdered. But I would guess that many people on here might know someone who was killed or has killed. It is a not a tasteful thing to dwell on and these people will not want to be reminded of it.
My main point is that murder is not a remote and academic question to many people. Some would say that because 1.2 per 100,000 are murdered each year in the UK we don't have to worry about it. Divide that figure by 52 and you might feel even safer. There's little chance of us being murdered this week. How about looking at the chance that are going to be murdered in the next hour. It is tiny. But that is the wrong way to look at it. You need to look at your lifetime probability of being murdered. In some parts of the world it is terrifying. I have calculated that the chance of being murdered in Cape Town given the current murder rate and an 80 year life time is more than 5%. The UK figure will be much less, but say you have a 1 in a 1000 lifetime chance of being murdered in Cardiff which is probably about right then just imagine that at the next home game more than 20 spectators were randomly selected to be murdered. Do you think that figure is so small that the attendance wouldn't drop? Of course not. No one would turn up.