There was great anger and outrage in the Shankill in the wake of the bombing. Billy McQuiston told journalist Peter Taylor that "anybody on the Shankill Road that day, from a Boy Scout to a granny, if you'd given them a gun they would have gone out and retaliated". Many Protestants saw the bombing as an indiscriminate attack on them. Adair believed that the bomb was meant for him. Two days after the bombing, as Adair was driving away from his house, he stopped and told a police officer "I'm away to plan a mass murder".