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Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, of Chapel Hill appears in a police booking photograph provided by the Durham County Sheriff

“The murder of three North Carolina college students was motivated by an ongoing dispute over a parking space,” foxnews.com reports, “despite widespread speculation the victims were targeted by an avowed atheist because of their Muslim faith.” This according to police who’ve interrogated the killer. The upshot of that discussion was conclusive . . .

Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, [above] was charged with three counts of first-degree murder after turning himself in to police in Chapel Hill overnight. Although a Facebook page in Hicks’ name that described him as a supporter of “Atheists for Equality” and blasted “radical Christians and radical Muslims” for causing strife in the world gave prompted rampant suspicion that the crime was motivated by hate, police said Wednesday it was about a parking space at the condominium complex where the murders took place.

So, nothing to see here in terms of domestic terrorists and the like? Needless, the antis won’t let the facts get in the way of a good old bloody shirt waving opportunity. Do they ever?

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104 COMMENTS

  1. Further proof that it is our society which is sick, killing someone(s) over a parking space? The psychological ramifications of that man’s thought processes are staggering.

      • That would be hilarious… but given the way the correctional service works I don’t think that’s the faction that would welcome him.

    • With three counts of first degree murder in NC, he might not be in prison very long…just until his final appeal gets rejected.

      • Normally around 35 years, making him near 80, shouldn’t we have mercy? No one even remembers the crime!

        I mean, really. When I was a kid, the killer could expect maybe 6 months. Now 20 years is really fast. You have a guarantee to a SPEEDY trial, there is no guarantee you can stretch it out forever.

      • He’ll go to Central Prison.

        And North Carolina doesn’t execute anyone anymore.

        He will just live to annoy correctional officers. Either general population or death row. (There is a death row but no on gets punished)

  2. VPC’s gonna have a field day with this, given how rare (though they’d never admit it) it is for a CHL holder to murder people.

    • Yep, at last they have an example of someone losing it and opening fire over a parking space. I’m sure they will make full use of it.

    • What report says he held a CHL (etc) permit? If he held such a permit then it’s a mark (albeit just 1) against the proposition that CHL holders are highly law-abiding. Conversely, if he was not such a holder that speculation that he might have been a holder is best avoided.
      Perhaps he is a prohibited person; or, someone who would have been found ineligible for a permit under local law.

        • ….

          Do you think support for the 2nd A is so strong that it is a good idea to go around unnecessarily insulting people?

        • If I’m mentally defective, I might be wrong about this whole 2nd amendment thing. But I’m not. The nice thing about OUR side is we have tolerance and diversity. The left is so jealous of that, they tell people we don’t have it and claim that it’s theirs. Lets not make them right.

    • I think we are looking at this wrong. It’s not the number of people with concealed carry *privileges* committing crimes. It’s the number of people committing crimes who do not possess concealed carry *privileges*.

      I recall law enforcement perpetrate more crimes than non law enforcement with concealed carry licenses.

      I know, what’s the point of logic and facts considering the opposition. I’ll never learn.

      • I used to carry around a valve-stem tool… I mean, I knew a guy who used to carry a valve stem tool. He would remove the guts from the stems and put them under the windshield wipers so that nothing was destroyed or stolen but the parking miscreant was sorely inconvenienced.

  3. I hate trying to ascribe motives based on limited information, particularly when very few actions are ever committed for a single reason.

    I assume he was crazy, because part of my definition of sanity involves not shooting three people dead for anything other than self-defense. Beyond that – I think it’s better until the facts are all in.

  4. Where there any G D’ s thrown? Has the Whitehouse denounced the hatred?

    I hope to GOD there aren’t any Hobby Lobby flags flying in the background or the prez may call in an airstrike followed by a ground invasion and his own version of Muslim genocide. Stay tuned sports fans.

  5. This story has already resumed being a ‘local’ story, now that ‘The Narrative’ can’t be twisted to fit the prevailing agenda.

    I suspect the media will leave this one alone, now that the degenerate perp can’t be tagged as a ‘Right Wing Gun Nut/Crusader’.

    • Well what are you waiting for? Start a twitter campaign. File a change.org petition. Get out there are stoke the fires, man! If you get enough press, I’m sure Holder will file a hate crime charge on Hicks. I’m sharpening my pitchfork now. #parkingspacesnotguns #outragemakesmeabetterperson #ohlookstarbucks

    • Not local anymore. It’s the new MuslimLivesMatter hashtag. And just like BlackLivesMatter it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the facts in evidence.

  6. I like how it’s so important that every states over and over the shooter’s (lack of) religion and the victims’ religion, yet in no other shooting cases is it ever brought up.

    • Hate is hate, and murder is murder. Motives and ideology are irrelevant under the law (or, at least, they should be irrelevant under the law *cough* unconstitutional “hate crime” laws *cough*).

      Personally, I wouldn’t care about his beliefs/ideology, if the media and pundits didn’t have a default, knee-jerk reaction to try to portray every nutjob shooter as a right-wing, Christian, TEA party extremist.

      There are certain philosophies and ideologies that lend themselves more to such an outcome (killing others), and then there are certain philosophies and ideologies that the media/others attempt to scapegoat for such outcomes. In the 20th century, the progressive-statist-atheist ideology/philosophy was responsible for tens of millions (if not more) of deaths of innocent humans (Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.).

      On a large scale, that matters, because of the magnitude of loss of life. But on a small scale, such as with this nutjob, it really doesn’t matter. He murdered three people in cold blood, and should be prosecuted, convicted, and executed for it – regardless of his philosophy/ideology.

    • It seems he was a very fundamentalist aetheist. Unlike tens of millions of people who quietly don’t believe in God, this guy was clearly loud about it and made it a focus of his on-line identity. Given that, it could be relevant to motive (with more info now, it seems that was not the case), so it’s reasonable to mention it. If somone murders people in the name of their God (or lack thereof), or their ideology, then it’s prefectly reasonable to discuss that as part of the story.

        • From Merriam-Webster:

          fundamentalism
          noun fun·da·men·tal·ism \-tə-ˌli-zəm\

          2: a movement or attitude stressing strict and literal adherence to a set of basic principles

          From Wiki:
          “Fundamentalist” has been used pejoratively to refer to philosophies perceived as literal-minded or carrying a pretense of being the sole source of objective truth, regardless of whether it is usually called a religion.

  7. Yeah, nothing to see here folks. Move along. This source is more reliable than the man’s own Facebook page. After all, it is much more fathomable that he assassinated three people over a parking space than bigotry.

  8. Er, no.

    People do not murder merely over a parking spot dispute. People murder due to hatred. The dispute is merely the catalyst for acting on that hatred.

    While I disagree with labeling hatred, and making some hatred more unlawful than other hate (he should be executed if convicted for these murders, regardless of his motives), it serves no useful purpose to claim that these murders were anything other than an act of hatred.

    He appears to be a very disturbed, hateful person, with plenty of hate to go around. He acted on his own natural inclinations. The object of those actions is very likely arbitrary, triggered by normal, random interactions.

    Pray for the victims and their families, and convict the murderer.

    (Though, we all know that there are those who will – once again, as they are wont to do – wave bloody shirts in attempted political gain.)

    • Wellllllll, What about the guy that killed the dogs that kept pooping on his lawn – then killed the owners of said dogs – then attempted to kill the responding police officer? If I remember correctly, another man ended the situation by killing the whacko…

      • Dunno. Other man was the first to hit the whacko, the whacko kept shooting, and the citizen kept firing his .357 while the officer opened up with his AR, the perp ended up several times dead from each gun.

        Trailer park life! Never boring!

    • “People do not murder merely over a parking spot dispute. ”

      I love how people spout lines like this as if they know what they’re talking about.

      Do a 2 minute google news search (not including today’s date) for “killed (or murdered) over parking space” and learn a bit before you type.

      • Do a 2 minute google news search (not including today’s date) for “killed (or murdered) over parking space” and learn a bit before you type.

        People don’t kill merely over a parking-space dispute. That dispute is merely the catalyst for someone who is already disturbed, and/or already has a violent disposition.

        • Correct. People only kill for four reasons. 1) justifiable homicide, war or self defense, 2) accidental death or negligence, 3) murder for profit, assassination 4) rage, hatred, insanity.

          Dispute over a parking space is not a factor in causing a homicide. It is just the psycho’s excuse.

  9. So the hindsight is that he was bonkers.

    Is there even any chance that he could have, prior to this, been found bonkers enough that a medical professional would have had him committed? I doubt it, IDing crazy is not a simple as a litmus test. And it’s not like you could use his Facebook affiliations or rants. If that were the case, I could have the lot of MDA, CSGV, and EveryDouche members committed for their ragings on their pages.

    As for being a CHL holder, well he could have carried a gun on him with or without. It just means he passed whatever checks their are in that state at the time he got the permit.

    And what if he had beat those 3 people to death with his fists? Would we ban fists?

  10. “Athiests for Equality” and he hated radical Christians? Sounds like another case of an armed democrat taking matters into his own hands. Nothing more dangerous than an armed liberal it seems.

    • The lefty statists are always saying that people can’t be trusted with guns, because they might flip out and kill somebody. And we gun owners comment that they might lack the self control that we have.

      I’m beginning to thing that might be the case.

      Maybe we need to add some other questions to the 4473:
      * Have you ever said “there ought to be a law…”?
      * Have you ever donated money to MoveOn.org?
      * Do you know what channel number MSNBC is on your cable/satellite service?

        • Nonsense! Why deny rights to ALL people just because a disproportionate fraction of a particular crude demographic lacks impulse control? If a right is to be denied then it should be denied as narrowly as possible as evidenced by the available data. Congress has seen fit to dis-able those people who have renounced their American citizenship; obviously based on a careful analysis of their lack of impulse control. Bloomberg proposes to dis-able black males under 25 consistent with his personal recognition of this demographic’s difficulty with impulse control. Are these narrowly-crafted or tarred with a broad brush?
          If anything at all is to be done on dis-abling anyone it ought to be based on narrow demographic/behavioral classes. By way of illustration, there were disorderly protests in Ferguson. Individually, protestors were more-or-less peaceful. Suppose a female politician over the age of 25 were found – upon arrest for disorderly conduct – to be intoxicated and carrying a loaded gun. Should she be excluded from Bloomberg’s proposed classification on the grounds of sex or age?
          Gun owners can be screened on muzzle discipline; why not screen un-armed belligerent social commentators on their “muzzle” discipline? Might a pattern of intemperate speech evidence lack of impulse control? In which demographics might we expect to find such a pattern? I’d expect it to cut-across races, age cohorts and sex.
          We must be highly skeptical of criteria for denying fundamental rights. Broad classes (all citizenship renouncers, all illegal aliens, all committed to a mental institution, all black males under 25) should be most suspect. Narrow behavior-based classes are worthy of – at least – careful study to better understand the problem of violence if not to craft legal barriers.

  11. Evangelical atheists killing muslims…. Well. Can’t say I’m shocked. Well, actually I am, I figured the first (thats really made the headlines) atheist attack upon another religion would certainly be Christianity.

    • People are making this out to be a religious attack (regardless of facts). Don’t assume the worst. The facts stand: Some sort of parking dispute led said man to shoot three people. That’s all we know, that’s probably all the police know.

      • Agreed, but what combination of worldview and psychological imbalance would allow a parking dispute to lead one to murder? Attributing it all to the parking dispute is a bit like blaming a gun for killing people. Perspective and heart (motive) have to play a role.

      • Agreed, he may have been just that much of a psychopath to kill people over a mere parking dispute, however, because he turned himself in, implying guilt, that’s most likely not the case.

  12. This is sad. This man needed therapy long ago, and maybe confinement. Mental health, sadly, is not available as it should be, and is not available in many areas of the country.

    On a rare few occasions, intervention is possible before something like this happens. I witnessed one incident about 2 years ago, when a irate driver became very incensed at another driver pulling into a parking space before him. Police were a few aisles over and came quickly and found he was going for one of the guns he had on his truck gun rack. Likely, one life at least was saved.

  13. I don’t see legs to this story. I also doubt it was only about a parking space-although in Chicago a woman had her brake lines cut after parking in a shoveled spot a few days ago. Which could lead to death. Crazy murderers gotta’ be crazy…

  14. A quick check reveals this clown to be a hard-core leftie.

    This story will sink like a stone. There are too many inconvenient truths to fit the narrative.

    We’ve all see the op-ed pieces and confessionals from lefties who say that people shouldn’t be trusted with guns because they can’t restrain themselves? You know the type of op-ed piece I’m talking about, right? The one where the writer confesses that he couldn’t restrain his impulses to use a gun, and that’s why sane people shouldn’t be allowed to have a gun?

    Yea, I’ve got a feeling that this one one of “those guys.”

  15. I’m just going to point out that this post, and all the relevant and irrelevant discussions taking place would not be happening if the 3 victims were anything other than Muslim and the shooter anything other than white.

    White Atheist shoots 3 Christians – Nothing
    Black Atheist shoots 3 white guys – Nothing
    Asian Shoots 3 Hispanics – Nothing
    Muslim shoots 3 Muslims – honor killing but still nothing
    Anybody shoots 3 Jews – Maybe something but doubtful

    Seriously, this is the media Trayvoning, or Browning the story. Same. Exact. Playbook.

  16. What in God’s earth was he thinking? ‘Hmm, if I just kill these people I’m bickering over a parking spot with, the police will surely see things my way, and the spot will be mine!’ I’m guessing he is simply nuts, because no way can I make sense of potentially going to death row over a damn parking spot.

  17. Chapel Hill is the most leftist area of the State. The odds of him having a CHL in that area are low. My brother in law is still waiting on a background check to be approved by the Sheriff 120days. He’s crazy for working for the federal government, but held a PA permit & even was able to get a Carry permit for NYC.

    • I live in Chapel Hill. I think that in my neighborhood, about 100 homes, there are 3 carry permits, mine included.
      Tragic happening. The anti’s here (about 85% of the population) will go nuts.
      Worth remembering about 5 years ago when a Muslim dude rented a Jeep Grand Cherokee and drove it through the Pit at UNC trying to kill as many students as possible. The worst he did was break some bones and hurt some 10 students. That was quickly forgotten. After all, he was just “disturbed.”

      • Well, yeah…and let’s not forget UNC-CH’s solution to violent rape is to put up “Rape Free Zone” signs and sell t-shirts.

        That is one weird place.

    • “The odds of him having a CHL in that area are low.”

      NC is Shall Issue, so that statement is false.

      “My brother in law is still waiting on a background check to be approved by the Sheriff 120days. He’s crazy for working for the federal government, but held a PA permit & even was able to get a Carry permit for NYC.”

      NC is Shall Issue with a maximum 90 day wait from the Sheriff. That is set in statute. If your BiL has waited 120 (business) days, he needs to exert some pressure on the Sheriff of Orange County to obey the law.

      Perhaps a nicely worded letter from a 2A friendly attorney would help, or perhaps contacting Grass Roots NC would help.

  18. I smell cover up. The administration does not want a religiously motivated shooting against Muslims. This is a better outcome for them.

    The other possibility is this guy knows he’s going to do some hard time no matter what the motive. With all the Muslim gangs behind bars, he’s probably floating a story that that he hopes will keep him from getting shanked.

    Even if true, my question is would he have shot a non-Muslim over a parking space? If a Klan member shot a black person over a parking space, I wouldn’t be saying “Not racially motivated! It was just a over a parking space!”

  19. His (soon-to-be-ex) wife claims it wasn’t religiously motivated, and that “Falling Down” was his favorite movie.

    Looks like a nut looking for an excuse.

  20. While I hedged on an earlier post, I’m delighted we were wrong based on earlier reports. Turns out he was a nutty lefty who hated Christians and the Tea Party, too. http://www.jihadwatch.org/2015/02/leftist-splc-fan-and-supporter-of-ground-zero-mosque-murders-muslims-hamas-linked-cair-brands-it-a-hate-crime

    I loathe that it happened, just as I would if a righty nut did it in religious hatred, BUT I will admit I’m glad the MSM doesn’t have another excuse to call again for more gun bans.

    Don’t get me wrong; I’m sure they’ll try, but what will it sound like? “As statists and collectivists, no one knows better than us how badly we need the government to protect us from nuts like ourselves.”

    • Ummm, that would kinda make sense, as bible-belters, nor tea partier’s, exactly have a track record of loving thy fellow atheists either. Of course, it is very unusual these days to see certain Muslims killing others simply b/c they were/are non-believing infidels (and hog parking spaces). Nobody seems to like anybody who is not in their “cool club” these days. Hot headed fat boy who could not control his impulses is all we have here. Temper temper.

  21. Oh please of course there is a religious component- Progressivism v2.0 is a religion to ardent believers who are otherwise unrooted in reason and morals.

    And Southern Poverty Law Center is the progtard’s equivalent
    of Fred Phelps Westboro Baptist Church,
    or Farrakhans Nation of Islam.

    Remember this charmer- “progtard jihadi”
    http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/leftist-shooter-used-southern-poverty-law-center-hate-map-to-plan-killings/

    h/t Instapundit

  22. The left must want gun control so bad because it helps to keep their dull voters out of jail. It also keeps “our” side from defending ourselves when a lefty flips out, tipping the odds in their favor during a tight election.

  23. To echo and expand upon Bill C above, this lunatic idiot created a tragedy for the victims and their families, and may have set back the 2A cause in NC for the next 5 years. There was an attempt last year, with the previous huge sweep of the legislature and governor’s office, to eliminate the much-hated “pistol purchase permit” for those who did not want/need a concealed carry permit. The Sherriff’s Association was against the legislation, so it did not pass. From what I read, this guy had a CC permit but was openly carrying. Does anyone really think that any legislator in NC (or in other states that have them) will submit a bill eliminating the pistol purchase permit or facilitating open carry any time soon? I would not be surprised if they try to extend the time period to get the permit. Or they may try to re-define “brandishing” in such a way as to make OC more difficult, even with a CC permit. I am not an attorney, but the stories say that the murderer had a long history of belligerent behavior toward neighbors and the stories imply that he had an openly carried weapon while being belligerent. Is that brandishing? Probably not, but I bet it will be after the legislature gets through re-defining.

    • How would a permit have been effective in preventing this crime?

      How would a background check, or any other so-called “common sense gun control” law have been effective in preventing this crime?

    • Also:

      I am not an attorney, but the stories say that the murderer had a long history of belligerent behavior toward neighbors and the stories imply that he had an openly carried weapon while being belligerent. Is that brandishing? Probably not, but I bet it will be after the legislature gets through re-defining.

      Brandishing/threatening/disorder require intent. Based on some of the stories I’ve heard, it might not have been difficult to prove intent. But did anyone pursue it? Did anyone file a police report after he got into arguments over the parking space, in a manner that multiple people inferred to be an attempt to intimidate with a holstered firearm?

    • “From what I read, this guy had a CC permit but was openly carrying. . . . . the stories say that the murderer had a long history of belligerent behavior toward neighbors and the stories imply that he had an openly carried weapon while being belligerent. Is that brandishing?”
      The facts in this single case are not yet nailed down firmly enough to attempt a definitive analysis. For the moment, let’s suppose that these facts are true. Clearly, no law will prevent a homicidal personality from carrying out his inclination. The CC permit doesn’t permit him to do the crime; withholding a permit wouldn’t prevent the crime. Won’t-issue woudln’t prevent the crime.
      Does “belligerent” behavior – especially while armed – at some point slip below the standard articulated by Samuel Adams as characteristic of “peaceable citizens”? In other words, are we at liberty to behave however aggressively as we like until we have dipped so far below social standards as to be convicted of a felony? On the one hand, I can quibble with every one of the Federal prohibited person criteria; on the other hand, some misdemeanor behavior seems offensive to Adams’ “peaceable” standard.
      Under a Shall-Issue system, a State’s legislature could decide just how much misdemeanor behavior (of a violent or belligerent nature) were consistent with its standards for holding a permit. Perhaps a few gun-owners would temper their behavior if they recognized that misdemeanor acts could jeopardize their permit eligibility.
      Imagine if this guy had the cops called on him for allegedly belligerent behavior. A friendly cop might take this guy aside and point out to him that if he carried-on as alleged he might be declined a carry permit (in his State) or if he held a permit, it might be suspended or revoked. If he continued such behavior, eventually he would be charged with disorderly conduct and a judge might convict him resulting in a suspension of his permit for a few years.
      Seems as though the felony benchmark (pretending from the domestic violence criteria) could be mis-interpreted by a few gun owners as a license to carry regardless of their behavior short of a felony.
      To be clear, I’m not suggesting a lifetime possession ban for any (violent, belligerent) misdemeanor. Instead, merely a suspension or – eventually – revocation of a carry permit.

    • That’s some nice knee-jerking there.

      If you think this one incident is going to set back ‘firearm freedom’ or legislation in NC, you’d better not look to see what happens in Charlotte, Durham or Fayetteville every year.

      The only reason this made ‘big news’ is because of the Muslim angle. The newshounds thought they had something to run with.

  24. Honestly, it doesn’t matter if it was religiously motivated or not: a crime is a crime.

    I can’t stand this hate-crime crap. Everyone trying to find out if it was a hate crime so they can get their Hate-Crime Boner. What will they do if they find out it was a hate-crime? Say christians are islamophobic? Say that muslims need more laws to protect them?? The whole thing with trying to find out if it was anti-islam is bull___. Knowing if it was a hate-crime does not matter! Exposing whether it was a “hate-crime” will not change my opinion of him, or my opinion of islam.
    You know he committed the crime and it wasn’t self-defense: JUST ARREST HIM!

    • An answer to the “hate crime” laws is that such an act terrorizes a class of people, not just the individual who is viewed as the immediate target.
      Suppose you burn a pallet (any random wooden object) on my lawn. I’m an OFWG. I have suffered trespass, damage to my lawn. Qualifies as a misdemeanor in my view.
      Conversely, suppose you dress up in a white sheet and burn a cross on my black neighbor’s lawn. While I have suffered nothing in particular, all the other black people in my community are terrorized. Is that a crime of the same magnitude as your burning a ballet on my lawn?
      Sometimes a subtle difference in the fact situation radically changes the character of an act. If I draw my handgun to show it to you in a public place that is not considered brandishing. If we are having an argument, it could be interpreted as brandishing.
      In the case under discussion, “hate-crime” is a pointless waste of argument. The evidence that he committed a triple murder is strong enough. Whatever other evidence as may come out in court may color the situation someone one-way-or-the-other. I doubt that evidence of a “hate-crime” is likely to make much difference in cases as severe as this one.

      • ” I doubt that evidence of a “hate-crime” is likely to make much difference in cases as severe as this one.” – MarkPA

        That’s exactly what I’m saying. I doubt anyone is going to say ” Oh, it wasn’t a hate-crime, he just killed them over a parking space — Move it along, people! Nothing to see here!”

      • ..in other words, the only thing that knowing this was a hate-crime does, is give the community an excuse to get all huffy-and-puffy about it: “RACIIIIIIST! I KNEW IT, He’s an islamophobic RACIIIIIIIST!!” –__– …. Not really all that different from what Al Sharpton does.

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