Why can’t we accept any risk?

This may be an unpopular opinion but it just seems that we as a society refuse to accept any risk in life.

Whenever anything happens, a murder, car crash, stabbing we are so quick to demand politicians ‘do something about it’. Maybe it started after the Port Arthur Massacre and the subsequent gun ban, but now it feels like everything must have a law change to prevent or minimise risk. For example, Sydney lock out laws. Politicians caved to ‘the community’ and essentially cancelled night life in our country’s major city as risk needed to be minimised. Now I’m not saying senseless violence should be accepted, but why can’t we just accept that these things will always happen no matter what and it is a risk we are willing to take?

Living in Queensland, police now have the right (and do it frequently) to search kids in shopping centres for knives. This has been in response to knife violence and stabbings, both horrible things. But we now have another layer of control from government officials to ‘protect us’ at the expense of more freedoms.

My last example was Cracker Night. Why did this stop? Because of injuries. Another risk we don’t want to accept. I could mention many others from bike helmets to RSA but you get my drift.

Do we as a society actually want continuous levels of safety pushed on us to remove any risks at the cost of freedom? This is an honest question I pose and not a cooker rant. Do we like living with all life risks reduced by the government? Interested to read your responses.