We 3D-Printed Luigi Mangione's Ghost Gun. It Was Entirely Legal [View all]

[justaprogressive]

For the last hour, in a backroom of a gun range in Arabi, Louisiana, I’ve been building Luigi Mangione’s gun. Well, not his, in the literal sense. The not-quite-finished firearm in my hands is very much mine: I was the one who pushed “print” on a 3D printer the prior evening and then, this morning, pulled the gun’s finished frame out of that mini-fridge-sized appliance. And I’m the one now struggling with the trickier task of attaching to that precisely contoured chunk of matte-black plastic all the metal and polymer components that will make it a fully functioning, semi-automatic pistol.

This weapon I’m constructing is, however, intended to be an exact clone of the partially 3D-printed gun that Mangione allegedly used to kill UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City in December, down to the stippling on the weapon’s plastic grip. I’ve come to this makeshift workshop on the outskirts of New Orleans with the goal of printing, assembling, and test-firing that very same model of handgun, complete with the 3D-printed silencer Mangione allegedly screwed to its muzzle.

The intention of this experiment is to see for myself just how far 3D-printed guns have come. I want to know if it’s true that the apparent murder weapon in the most high-profile assassination in recent memory can, in 2025, be made in the privacy of a garage by essentially anyone, without facing any gun control whatsoever or even breaking any laws.

The 3D printing, it turns out, was the easy part. Now I’m in the midst of the finicky process—something like assembling a very small piece of Ikea furniture—of building onto my homemade handgun frame the rest of a gun’s components, all ordered off the internet. This includes everything from the trigger assembly to the slide and barrel that ride on top of the Glock-style pistol’s plastic-printed body.

https://www.wired.com/story/luigi-mangione-ghost-gun-built-tested/