WASHINGTON – The brazen assassination of UnitedHealthcare's CEO was likely carried out with a ghost gun, one of the undetectable weapons you’ll be able to turn right into a home, police said Monday.
A ghost gun is a firearm and not using a serial number, and police consider the weapon utilized in the shooting of Brian Thompson last week could have been made using a 3D printer. It was able to firing 9mm cartridges. The man arrested within the crime, Luigi Mangione, also had a silencer on him, police said.
RELATED: Man arrested in shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO worked at Stanford for a summer
In recent years, ghost weapons have increasingly appeared at crime scenes within the United States.
Here's a have a look at the guns and the efforts to control them:
What are Ghost Guns?
The firearms are privately manufactured and shouldn’t have serial numbers.
Generally, firearms manufactured by licensed corporations will need to have serial numbers, normally marked on the frame of the weapon, that allow officials to trace the weapon to the manufacturer, the gun dealer and the unique purchaser.
However, ghost guns are made up of parts that the owner can assemble. The crucial component in constructing an undetectable weapon is the so-called lower receiver. Some are sold in do-it-yourself kits and the receivers are often made from metal or polymer. These include semi-automatic handguns and rifles.
Are they legal?
In the United States, it’s legal to construct a firearm for private use. Until about two years ago, ghost gun kits were available online, allowing people to assemble the guns at home without background checks or age verification.
As police found more ghost guns at crime scenes, the Biden administration introduced age requirements and background checks in 2022.
Buying one now’s more like buying a daily gun at a gun store.
Since then, the variety of ghost guns has declined or declined in several major cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Baltimore, in line with court documents.
RELATED: Fewer ghost guns linked to crimes in California as a result of higher laws and enforcement, says state AG
But gun groups have challenged the regulation in court. The Supreme Court heard the case in October and seemed prone to uphold the regulation. No verdict has been issued yet.
Where else were ghost guns used?
According to the Justice Department, the variety of ghost guns seized by law enforcement increased from 4,000 in 2018 to almost 20,000 in 2021. However, traditional weapons are still much more commonly utilized in crimes.
Ghost guns really got here into the general public consciousness in 2013 when John Zawahri opened fire on the campus of Santa Monica College in California, killing six people, including his father and brother. Zawahri, who was later shot by police, had assembled an AR-15-style weapon after failing a background check at a gun dealer.
A gunman who killed his wife and 4 others in Northern California in 2017 built his own gun to get around a court order banning him from owning firearms. In 2019, a teen fatally shot two classmates and injured three others with a homemade pistol at a suburban Los Angeles school.
A Mass shootings carried out An AR-15-style ghost gun killed five people in Philadelphia in 2023. A ghost gun was also utilized in a shooting that critically injured two kindergarten students at a small religious school in Northern California last week, police said.
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