Today, I was walking back to my car in a supermarket parking lot. I saw an otherwise nondescript man walking around - slowly, seemingly aimlessly - cradling something fairly oversized in his hand. I couldn't easily make out what it was. My next thought: I needed to confirm that it wasn't - or was - a weapon. This wouldn't have even crossed my mind a few years ago. Yet steadily, gradually - over the last several years - I have found myself, at times, more frequently wondering about the building I'm in, the open-air parking structure I'm walking through, the crowded restaurant I'm seated in - and what might be my odds of surviving a random mass shooting. I imagine more folks in the US could relate to this line of thinking - more than, say, people reading this in other nations. It's a sadly unique, culturally-specific lived experience - honed not from paranoia or drama, but from the obscene frequency of the randomness to now-widespread murders. (By the way, the innocent stranger in the parking lot had been balancing an oversized mobile phone, nestled atop a rectangular brown plastic package.)

Today, I was walking back to my car in a supermarket parking lot. I saw an otherwise nondescript man walking around - slowly, seemingly aimlessly - cradling something fairly oversized in his hand. I couldn't easily make out what it was. My next thought: I needed to confirm that it wasn't - or was - a weapon. This wouldn't have even crossed my mind a few years ago. Yet steadily, gradually - over the last several years - I have found myself, at times, more frequently wondering about the building I'm in, the open-air parking structure I'm walking through, the crowded restaurant I'm seated in - and what might be my odds of surviving a random mass shooting. I imagine more folks in the US could relate to this line of thinking - more than, say, people reading this in other nations. It's a sadly unique, culturally-specific lived experience - honed not from paranoia or drama, but from the obscene frequency of the randomness to now-widespread murders. (By the way, the innocent stranger in the parking lot had been balancing an oversized mobile phone, nestled atop a rectangular brown plastic package.)

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