The ghost gun that the authorities believe was used to kill UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson last week in Manhattan was an exceedingly rare variety.
By Bob Mery | Dec 11, 2024 Updated 02:50 a.m. ET
The police officers in Pennsylvania who on Monday arrested the man who has now been charged in the killing, Luigi Mangione, 26, said that he was found with a black pistol and a suppressor, often called a silencer. Both, the authorities said, had been fabricated with a 3-D printer, a device that sculpts a physical object from a digital model.
Each year, authorities in the U.S. seize thousands of ghost guns, almost all of them originating from inexpensive kits bought online that can be assembled into a working weapon in as little as half an hour. But it is rare to recover a 3-D printed gun used in a crime, according to Tom Chittum, a former associate deputy director of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives.
“If the gun used in the New York assassination really was 3-D printed, it would certainly be the highest-profile crime ever committed with one, and it would be one of a small number overall,” said Mr. Chittum, who now works for a public safety technology company.
A 3-D printer can be used to create a gun frame, which is the only individual part of a firearm that federal law regulates, and then assemble a working firearm by equipping it with commercially made aftermarket components that are not regulated, including the slide, barrel, and trigger mechanism, Mr. Chittum said.
The Pennsylvania authorities said Mr. Mangione’s pistol had a plastic handle, a metal slide and a threaded metal barrel.
The authorities say the weapon appeared to match the one seen in grainy surveillance video of the killing that circulated widely. It had a distinctive suppressor attached to the barrel, prompting conjecture that the shooter might be a professional hit man.
In the surveillance video, the shooter exhibits familiarity and proficiency with the weapon, appearing to clear a jam at one point and resuming his fatal fire.
The authorities have not said that Mr. Mangione made the gun he was found with. But there are an increasing number of do-it-yourself gun makers, some of whom are skirting the law.
People prohibited from owning guns, like felons, can readily obtain ghost guns, which do not bear serial numbers, unlike firearms made by companies and bought from licensed dealers.
Tracing a ghost gun’s bullets in criminal investigations can be difficult. The gun taken from Mr. Mangione had a loaded Glock magazine with six 9-millimeter full metal jacket rounds, and he also had one loose 9-millimeter hollow-point round, according to a criminal complaint filed in Pennsylvania.
Three-dimensional printing makes it much easier for the average person to quickly and cheaply build gun components.
Plans for creating homemade guns are available online. Makers often share their plans online with other enthusiasts.
A handwritten document found on Mr. Mangione downplayed the difficulty of planning the shooting as a “fairly trivial” process that included “basic CAD,” an apparent reference to the computer-aided design software behind the 3-D printing process.
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