I think the modern ability to know of every news story almost instantly fuels this.
An Amber Alert about missing child is carried nationwide over the cable news; media broadcasts are filled with every crime every day-- it certainly makes us aware. Good or Bad ? It can spin off in to paranoia.
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I like to take the historical perspective- and one that if it were to have happened to me in the years past might have had a different outcome.
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There have always been evil people out there, there is just more of us now, so there may seem to be more of them- but the percentages are still just as low. We just know about them, and are better infom'd today.
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Stepping back a few years, the Clock Work Orange-like gangs of London's ultra-violent hoodlums in the 18th and 19th centuries made the life of any city dweller cheap. Child abductions, murders were common place. In my Colorado mining town there were people killed almost nightly in the gambling hells and brothels-- but in those days a crime in Poison Spider Oklahoma didn't get plaster'd all over CNN for the next week. With that sort of media coverage it makes it seem we are constantly in the midst of a continued crime wave.
Maybe that awareness is not such a bad thing, but when it bleeds off into such a passionate debate involving an innocent hobby? I think that the message that is being sent out here is that Ham Radio is going to get you Killed. There are Boogey Men stalking 75 metre's, and all those creeps in long raincoats are taking down call letter plates in the supermarket parking lots. Its enuff to scare off any potential ham.
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That said, the awareness and publicity of evil probably saved my life.
I was living in London, and there had been a ghastly abduction and murder of a young woman- right off the street near where I lived. Naturally everyone was hyper aware- and I might not have been if the news coverage wasn't so intense.
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On my way home alone one evening I was approached by a strange man in a car who offered me a ride. He was young, well dressed in a British naval officer's uniform, and he had the most pleasant voice.
But..........Wasn't there something in the news?.. that murder... something.... something that mentioned a uniform? This all went racing thru my thoughts.
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I didn't approach the car; I said a curt 'Thank you - but no"........ and enter'd the pub on the corner as quickly as I could calmly walk away.
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Now that is the stuff of real paranoia.
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I'm going to say my 73's to this topic and leave the poor new hams alone. We live in a cyber world- that should be enuff awareness to keep an amateur safe in his/her hobby.
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Lauri
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