The same point can be made about gun control, but there are definitely "true believers" who think that limiting access to guns is the most important political issue _because_ it would save lives. There are even people who are scared of mass shootings, which have killed ~700 people in 35 years[1] in the USA. I've seen blogs use that statistic as an argument for stricter gun control! There are people who are scared of flying, when 429 people died in 2013 from aviation accidents[2] (albeit overwhelmingly in GA, not commercial). Yet these same people happily drive to work every day, even though ~32,000 died in automobile accidents in 2014[3]!

Everyone knows that humans are terrible at estimating small risks of large dangers. The really scary thing is that humans are also by-and-large incapable of updating based on that knowledge.

[1]: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-m... [2]: http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/data/Pages/AviationDataSt... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i...