Last week’s brazen double shooting inside a Four Corners barber shop, which left 20-year-old Elijah Ricardo Clunie of Dorchester dead and a second man wounded, has the city on edge. While Boston’s crime rate is down overall, there’s no question that parts of the city are currently at heightened risk due to gunfire and criminal activity.

The Washington Street corridor, where the Labor Day afternoon shooting unfolded inside the Exclusive Barber Shop, is a particularly worrisome hot spot. Another man, 38-year-old Jashun Cooley, was shot and killed across the street from the barber shop on Aug. 25. And a third person was hit by a bullet nearby on Ellington Street on Aug. 30. The victim, who will be okay, was “reluctant” to talk to detectives about the round he took to his right arm.

The carnage that took place inside the Exclusive barber shop last week, unfortunately, is not at all exclusive to that one barber shop. Very disturbingly, there’s ample evidence that men’s barber shops have become a target for gunmen, armed robbers, and murderers in recent years.

In October 2022, May Hylton was gunned down as he worked cutting hair inside Celebrity Cuts, just a couple of blocks from the Exclusive shop crime scene on Labor Day. In January 2023, a gunman opened fire inside the Eliot Barber Shop on Bowdoin Street before dashing into a waiting car and fleeing the scene. One person was hit, but only grazed, thankfully.

There have been other atrocities, too. AJ Monteiro was murdered in August 2017 as he sat in a barber’s chair inside Creole International, a Stoughton Street shop near Uphams Corner. A 20-year-old man, Stephan Pires, was shot and killed inside a Geneva Avenue shop in 2012.

And it’s not just Dorchester, of course. A barber named Rick Knight was shot to death in a shop in the South End in 2014. There have been violent incidents in Hyde Park, Brighton, and Mattapan, too.

In July, a four-pack of armed robbers wearing ski masks rolled into Edward’s Barbershop in Grove Hall and robbed six men of valuables, which included a gun and an ironically named “smart” watch, which was quickly tracked to the crew’s base near Ronan Park. Three of the four robbers— men in their thirties and forties— were taken into custody by a BPD SWAT team.

It’s hardly hyperbole to say that the barber profession – and just the act of going for a haircut – can be hazardous in parts of this city. That doesn’t even account for the young people – children – who have witnessed acts of gun violence in this community.

“We shouldn’t normalize this,” said state Sen. Liz Miranda, who knew Monteiro, the man killed execution-style on Stoughton Street in front of a little boy back in ’17. “Barber shops and salons are the number one small business started by Black and brown entrepreneurs here. They should be a place of refuge,” said the senator, who regards her hair stylist as “my therapist” as well.

Instead, she says, some now fear being “a sitting duck” in their shops.

Miranda, like many of us, was also horrified by a post-mortem video that circulated on social media last week showing the aftermath of the latest barber shop killing. That’s evidence of a larger, global dysfunction, of course.

But for its part, Boston has to confront the fact that we have murderers in our midst who prey on their perceived enemies in businesses that should be safe places for everyone.

The city – and all of us – need to approach this for what it is: a unique public safety threat that demands our attention.