Another Reason to Carry a Gun: FBI Stopped ISIS-Inspired New Year’s Eve Knife, Hammer Attacks

Christian Sturdivant, 18, of Mint Hill, North Carolina probably wasn’t voted “Most Likely To Succeed” among his high school class. The Burger King employee planned a New Year’s Eve massacre, but he didn’t even have a gun. Yet. His plan was to commit a New Year’s eve terrorist attack that he revealed to what he believed to be his online ISIS handler…someone who was actually an undercover law enforcement officer.

Sturdivant’s was arrested by the FBI before he could carry out the attack. From the New York Times . . .

Investigators said that he had planned to carry out an attack that day using knives and hammers at a grocery store and a fast-food restaurant in Mint Hill, the Charlotte suburb where he lived with his grandparents, federal officials said.

“He was preparing for jihad, and innocent people were going to die,” Russ Ferguson, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of North Carolina, told reporters on Friday. “We were very, very fortunate they did not.”

Studivant, the aspiring rocket surgeon jihadist, intended to target Christians, Jews and the LGBTQ population. It isn’t clear how he planned to divine who was Christian, Jewish or gay…maybe he’d look for people with Christmas decorations still up and target them. Those who didn’t have decorations would apparently be Jewish in his little mind.  And maybe he looked for anyone flying a rainbow flag? Whatever.

More from the Times . . .

The investigation into Mr. Sturdivant in North Carolina began after law enforcement officials said they were alerted to a series of public social media posts that were supportive of the Islamic State, or ISIS. The account, they said, was traced to Mr. Sturdivant.

Investigators believe that Mr. Sturdivant had been radicalized online as a teenager and had first appeared on the radar of federal investigators in 2022, according to officials and court records.

At the time, investigators said, Mr. Sturdivant, then 14, had been in contact on social media with a purported ISIS member in Europe, who had instructed him to dress in black clothing, knock on people’s doors and attack them with a hammer. Investigators said he had set off to do just that, but his grandfather restrained him and brought him home.

That kind of knock-and-attack ploy might be effective in non-rural areas of states like Massachusetts, Connecticut or California. Pulling that stunt in a state like North Carolina with far more gun owners seems a lot riskier, especially if his target had a gun on his or her person.

[Investigators] also found handwritten notes buried in the trash that officials called his manifesto. He described his beliefs and outlined the details of how he planned to pull off an attack. “Will carry the knife in my pants and walk to the bathroom,” he wrote.

It was his belief, according to the note, that he would then go to heaven as a martyr.

If you need another reason to carry a firearm, I’ll close with this: playing “cowboys and jihadis” is a lot more fun when you’re armed.