The man arrested Monday in connection with the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson is believed to have had a type of homemade weapon known as a “ghost gun.”
Luigi Mangione, 26, named by police as a “person of interest,” had a “ghost gun capable of firing 9mm bullets and a suppressor” when he was arrested on gun possession charges at Altoona police , Pennsylvania, New York Department Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny told reporters.
A senior law enforcement official told NBC News that the gun found in Mangione’s possession appears to be similar to the weapon used in the Manhattan murder. Kenny said the weapon “may have been made with a 3D printer.”
The gun Luigi Mangione was found with in Altoona, Pennsylvania on Monday.
What are ghost weapons?
“Ghost guns” are firearms that can be assembled at home from parts purchased online. These parts can usually be obtained without a background check and do not have serial numbers.
How long have ghost guns been around?
The DIY kits have been around since the 1990s, but have exploded in popularity in recent years, especially among criminals.
The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said it received approximately 45,000 reports of suspected privately made firearms recovered by law enforcement agencies in criminal investigations from January 2016 to December 2021 — including 692 murders or attempted murders.
The number of recovered ghost guns rose steadily each of those years, from 1,758 in 2016 to 19,344 in 2021, according to the Justice Department.
Technology has also contributed to the surge: Online videos on how to assemble the weapons are viewed millions of times, while some vendors offer 3D printing files that allow customers to print and assemble the weapons themselves, without serial numbers.
The Justice Department said in a 2022 fact sheet that firearms without serial numbers are incredibly difficult to track — the ATF reported it was only able to trace 0.98% of suspected ghost guns submitted by law enforcement to individual buyers.
What is the government doing about this issue?
In 2022, President Joe Biden announced restrictions on ghost gun sales with the finalization of a rule requiring gun kit makers to list serial numbers on firearms and requiring sellers to follow the same standard as with other guns, including requiring background checks on purchases.
“These weapons are the weapons of choice for many criminals,” Biden said, and “we are going to do everything we can to take that choice away from them.”
Gun rights groups and manufacturers have challenged the ATF rule in court, with a federal judge in Texas and an appeals court ruling against the Biden administration. The Supreme Court has twice ruled that the regulations can remain in place as long as the lawsuit continues.
Gun safety advocates, meanwhile, have urged Congress to close the loophole and enact the rule into law. More than a dozen states have also passed laws regulating ghost guns, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun violence prevention organization.
The group and others have also urged Congress to take action on 3D-printed weapons, for which the Trump administration relaxed regulations in 2020. No federal law bans them, but the ATF says it is illegal to offer them for sale without a permit and they must be detectable by metal detectors and X-ray machines. According to Everytown, a number of states also have individual laws that regulate or ban the guns.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
