Stories from mass shooting survivors and their loved ones, as well as new research, are creating more awareness of gun violence. A new study from the University of Colorado Boulder shows that 1 in 15 American adults have been on the scene of a mass shooting. This study defines a mass shooting as an incident when four or more people are shot in a public space.
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The research comes as those in the Boulder community gathered four years later to remember the 2021 King Soopers shooting that took the lives of 10 people and impacted countless others.
That impact includes Erika Mahoney, whose father Kevin was killed while grocery shopping that day. Four years later, it’s easy to see Mahoney’s strong bond with her dad in family albums and frames throughout the house.
Mahoney showed CBS News Colorado some of those photos, describing them as she thumbed through.
“Here we’re in the kitchen, and dad, I’m wearing my dad’s giant jacket,” Mahoney said. “It’s motivating to see his face, but I also hear him saying, like, keep going.”
As a former journalist, Mahoney is now dedicating her life to sharing stories like his and documenting the lasting impact of gun violence.
“The news covers [mass shootings] in the beginning, and the hardest part is those years in between where you’re crying in the corner, or you can’t go grocery shopping, or you are, you know, missing your dad and it’s Father’s Day,” Mahoney said.
Mahoney Family 
To showcase those moments and the generational pain that can follow a mass shooting, she’s releasing a new podcast this spring. Senseless will feature more than a dozen people affected by gun violence in Boulder.
“At its heart, this podcast is truly a love letter to my dad, and it’s about how we move forward after tragedy,” Mahoney said.
One of her podcast guests will be David Pyrooz, a professor of sociology and criminologist at the Institute for Behavioral Science at CU Boulder. His episode will break down his new study that came up with the data behind the 1 in 15, or about 7% of U.S. adults on average that have been at the scene of a mass shooting.
“It means you were in the direct vicinity to where you could see the shooter. There were bullets that were fired in your direction, or if you couldn’t directly see the shooter, that you could hear the gunshots,” Pyrooz said.
The study came to that number by surveying 10,000 people last year. The research also details that more than 2% of U.S. adults have been injured during a mass shooting.
Pyrooz explains, “Mass shootings, you know, I know they occur across the world, but, you know, in the United States, there’s just such a concerted interest and focus on it, and we should aim to understand this better.”
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Meanwhile, Mahoney continues to remember who her dad was and hopes the new data and personal stories together can showcase the realities of mass violence — and move the needle towards stopping them.
“If we can realize that this affects so many people far beyond really any number can show, because I’m not included in the data, and I was traumatized, and so, you know, we I think that the ripple effect is even so much bigger than we can imagine,” Mahoney said.
