Europeans always wonder why it is so easy in this country for a mentally ill person (like the murderer at the desserts cafe) to get a gun. I wonder if this is a case of random violence, or whether the murderer knew his victim. They are both of about the same age, the dead man was in the military, and perhaps the killer too; after all, this is San Diego.

If it was random, it alll started with the crazy guy simply staring at his victims. A few years back, my (now) wife and I were having lunch at a Souplantation restaurant, when I noticed a young man staring at us in a very obvious way. Other than our, er, good looks, there was no reason for staring like that; perhaps the fact that we are of different ethnicities may had something to do with it.

This went on for a while, and I was getting increasingly annoyed. Eventually I screamed at him “Are you staring at us?!!” After that, he just stopped staring and that was the end of it.

Had it been some armed lunatic like the guy in the news this week, he may have shot me… By the way, it appears that this week’s victim’s wife was of a different ethnicity too, to judge from her name.