Discussion: 5 Points To Know About The Man Suspected Of Murdering 3 Muslim Students

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Or maybe a psychotic episode. Did I miss any of his social media posts that were suggesting violence towards anyone?

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23

Did I say “only in the US”? (Answer: No.) I was referring to a particular trend (which can be dated to the time of Obama’s first presidential campaign) in the U.S. The Republican Party and its propaganda organs began to revive racial innuendos that had become politically incorrect, and, to an even greater extent, began to demonize Muslims (which is something George W. Bush did not do in the wake of 9/11.)

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It matters very little to a person who died whether he died of ebola or from slipping on a banana peel, but for the survivors, it’s a question of some urgency.

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" His “likes” include a page called “Mitt Romney sucks,” “dogs against Romney” and “liberals against conservative propaganda.”

It seems this fellow was not a Republican. There are murderers of all political and religious stripes. Indisputable fact.

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26

Well, we should work to eliminate Ebola, but if we banned bananas, people would slip on some other fruit, I fear. Murderers murder. It’s what they do.

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Once again, a guy with a gun murders innocent people over some petty disagreement. Had he left his penis extension at home, the most he’d be looking at was a little knee pain from having to park a bit further away. He wouldn’t be facing life in prison or the death penalty, he wouldn’t have the permanent stain on his soul of having killed innocents, and he’d have the rest of his life to do or become whatever he wanted. Now it’s all over, and it’s over because he had a gun.

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28

And conservatives railing against liberalism. Though to the extent that tolerance is supposed to be one aspect of liberalism, the guy was no liberal. He was highly intolerant of anyone who professed a religious faith.

Not if you take them at face value, perhaps, but they do sound to me as if there is a lot of anger behind them. I wonder how deeply he really believed some of the more “politically correct” things he posted on his Facebook page. Because I find it hard to reconcile this statement:

“I don’t deny you your right to believe whatever you’d like; but I have the right to point out it’s ignorant and dangerous for as long as your baseless superstitions keep killing people.”

with a guy who would shoot three people over a parking space, absent a lot of seething anger under the surface.

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29

I totally agree. Of course, there are born murderers, such as serial killers. But so many murderers are just dimwits or hotheads with way too much destructive power in their hands.

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30

It seems to me that he had a lot of anger issues and did not know how to resolve them. Guns and anger is never a good combination. Also, not many liberals are mad about gun control. Libertarians yes, democrats not so much.

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31

Tolerance doesn’t mean agreeing with everything some group propounds. His comments on the resemblance between radical Islam and fundamentalist Christianity seem spot-on and I have read dozens of such here (and made a few myself). It’s his actions that are disgusting, not his beliefs.

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::cracks knuckles:: I postulate that agnostics are more enlightened than atheists because we don’t have anything to prove.

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33

Did I say he was a Republican? (Answer: No.) Did I say this particular crime was a hate-crime? (Answer: No.) My point was just that it is important to investigate any potential hate element, and to be on the lookout for correlations between hate-propaganda and hate-crime.

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34

This article seems to be put together hastily as click bait using social media posts. There are no facts from the scene or from interviews with eyewitnesses.

The direct precipitating event preceding the homicides is clearly the parking dispute. We need to know what exactly happened in the context of the dispute. More evidence from both sides is needed here.

There is nothing that justifies what Craig Hicks did – in my mind, the only possible exception might be if he was acting in self defense. His religious beliefs or beliefs about religion may end up being irrelevant in the end.

I have a hard time taking any article that cites Reza Aslan as an expert source seriously. Aslan is a joke. His article in Salon is very poorly thought through, extremely biased. This supposed religious scholar uses a poll as a source of research facts.

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35

Lots of normal people weigh their guns.

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36

I think you nailed it. I would not condone but understand a crazy person shooting others in the heat of the moment over a parking spot. This guy went inside his victims apartment and shoot them in the head execution style, displaying total disregard for human life.

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37

It’s gratifying to know that a lunatic, regardless of his political leanings, can easily acquire a gun to slaughter innocent people. Thank-you, NRA.

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38

No, of course it doesn’t. But it does mean giving other people’s beliefs the same respect you would wish them to have for yours. Referring to someone’s religion as “ignorant” and “baseless superstition” is very far from that. Calling people who advocate stronger gun control “hypocritical” is very far from that.

Tolerance also means having the humility to consider that you yourself might be wrong. There is nothing in this article that indicates he had anything but contempt for any opinion that was different from his own.

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39

Yeah, well the proof is in the pudding. (I’m not sure what that has to do with anything or even exactly what it means. But I thought I’d throw it out there.)

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40

No one is a murderer until he murders. There are a tiny, tiny number of people who are born with problems, or have developmental or environmental factors, that make them highly likely to become violent offenders. The rest of them are made. As for the rest of the “ordinary” killers–people who kill during the course of another crime, or for money or in a jealous rage–the truth is that we just don’t know very much about what causes that kind of thing, or what separates us from them. Very few people will never kill under any circumstances. Most people–I would venture, at least–have been at some point placed in an emotional state where they at least momentarily fantasize about killing someone. Maybe there are things we can do to reduce that kind of crime and there are some things that seem to have made a difference in the past–the Kevin Drum lead theory springs to mind.

But if the thing that’s making people more inclined to kill is a toxic contagious meme, that’s a thing society doesn’t care about at its own deadly peril.

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41

That’s true and likewise but the solution to religious fundamentalism is not to replace it with atheistic zealotry. Note: I’m not sure that’s what happened here.

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