Honolulu Lite
HOW come when wackos freak out they don't shoot drug dealers, pimps and gangsters instead of innocent bystanders? Quiet loners are a
curse on societyI'm not condoning the killing of anyone. I just wonder why, when an idiot with a gun decides to open fire -- when he makes the huge immoral decision to kill human beings -- why he doesn't consider taking out a few people who are a curse on society?
No. Instead, these guys gun down innocent children or classmates or fellow stock market day traders.
The shooting at the Jewish Community Center in Los Angeles was particularly gruesome because it was filled with kids. Luckily, Buford Farrow wasn't much of a shot. None of the kids were killed. But then, after leaving the community center, he may have shot a postman delivering mail. As if working for the post office isn't stressful enough. When you consider all the shootings that have occurred INSIDE post offices by disgruntled employees, you figure walking the beat has got to be a safer option. Then some cracker named Buford comes by and blows you away while you're sticking an Ed McMahon contest form in somebody's mail box.
It's really sick. How hard would it have been for Buford to just walk into the local gang headquarters and mix it up with those guys instead of some poor guy just doing his job?
I do have a suggestion that may help deter another shooting like this week's. It turns out that Buford had a close personal relationship with a woman named Debbie Mathews.
DEBBIE had been married to a guy named Robert J. Mathews, who was a notorious white supremacist from Washington state. He founded a neo-Nazi group called The Order, which killed people, robbed armored cars and generally acted in supremely criminal ways.
Federal agents caught up with Mathews in 1984 in Washington and shot it out with him. In the end, Mathews was supremely dead.
Sometime after that, Mathew's wife Debbie and this character Buford began a relationship. They might have even gotten married.
Now, it seems to me that it would behoove society to have a little chat with Debbie Mathews. You know, find out who she's dating now. She obviously has a knack for identifying men who will become a menace to society. She's got some sort of psycho radar, probably more accurate than any FBI profiling system.
The Feds need to call her up and say, "Hey, Debbie, how's it going? Say, do you happened to be involved with anyone right now? No? Well, do you feel attracted to anyone in particular? There's a guy named Bubba we've been tracking for a while. If we faxed you his picture, would you tell us if you think he's cute? Would you consider putting a personal ad in the local paper and letting us know who responds to it? Here's your chance to do something good for the country, Deb, because when it comes to men, boy can you pick 'em."
I doubt she'd cooperate. That's the trouble with these kinds of crimes. The perpetrators are always "quiet loners." I think it's a rule. "Boisterous crowd-lovers" never seem to go off the tracks and start shooting people.
Maybe someone should start a web site called "quietloner.com" on the Internet. That way, we could build a national database of all the quiet loners out there and keep an eye on them. Or at least put Valium in their water.
Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Write to him at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802
or send E-mail to charley@nomayo.com or
71224.113@compuserve.com.
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