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Should we have ever flattered ourselves to imagine that we are not seven years old, last week we were corrected: Don’t go too far from home, we were warned, and look out for stranger danger.

Well, not necessarily “we” — in a sweeping international travel advisory, the United States State Department warned its citizens that it’s dangerous to venture forth into the big, bad world. Perhaps, then, the rest of us are the suspicious candy-peddlers lurking in white vans. Hard to know, really — it’s all so vague. What signs of terrorist activities are people meant to look out for? Anything! Where are they meant to look? Everywhere! What are they meant to do in the event that they see, you know, something? Anyone’s guess! The advisory is global in every way.

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By infantilizing the people that they’re supposed to protect, broad terrorist and travel alerts are not only stupid, but damaging.

They’re stupid for a couple of reasons. First, they often exaggerate some risks while completely ignoring others. Don’t want to compare deaths by cholesterol to death by Kalashnikov? Fair enough: heart disease isn’t a sentient killer, even if it is a serial one. But at least compare deadly violence to deadly violence, and give all murders equal weight. Police officers have killed over 200 unarmed people in the United States just this year, while terrorists killed about 150 people in France during the same period. And the Global Study on Homicide reports that North America’s intentional homicide rate is higher than most sub-regions in Asia, Europe and Oceania. Not that North Americans should flee their homes, either. North America’s intentional homicide rate has recently been in decline. But even that’s part of a global trend: overall, human beings can worry less and less about getting murdered.