Updated 12/9/24: While police previously stated that they believed the suspect used a B&T Station Six pistol with a built-in silencer, new reports indicate that the suspect used an untraceable ghost gun paired with a silencer. We have updated this story to reflect the new information.
According to The New York Times, police believe the suspect who shot and killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan last Wednesday used a 9mm ghost gun with a silencer installed to quiet his gunshots. Police arrested the suspect in Altoona, Pennsylvania, on Monday, December 9, and recovered the weapon “believed to have been used in the shooting.” The frame, or bottom half, of the 9mm pistol and the silencer appear to have been made using a 3D printer.
The news comes as the U.S. Supreme Court considers a challenge to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) rule regulating ghost guns as commercially made firearms in Garland v. VanDerStok. Since it went into effect in August 2022, the ATF’s “frame and receiver” rule has helped shrink the market for ghost gun parts and kits. However, 3D printing is still
Gun groups like the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the gun industry’s trade association, have also celebrated the recent surge in silencer sales, claiming the devices are now “as normalized among the shooting and hunting community as TikTok is with Gen Z.” The National Firearms Act (NFA) imposed strict registration requirements on silencers after they were used in several high-profile crimes in the early 1900s, but gun groups have worked to weaken silencer regulations in recent years.
THE assassin’s gun HAD A SILENCER
Silencers, or sound suppressors, are devices that dampen a firearm’s sound signature, making it difficult to determine where gunshots originate. In the wrong hands, silencers can be used to ambush unsuspecting victims, as this shooting makes clear. Surveillance footage shows the masked gunman firing three shots before fleeing the scene. It took a bystander several moments to realize shots had been fired — most likely because of the silencer — before they ran the other direction.
Enacted in 1934, the NFA requires that civilians interested in owning or building a silencer first submit an application to the ATF with a copy of their fingerprints, a passport-style photo, and a $200 tax stamp before undergoing an enhanced background check. The process was designed to “curtail, if not prohibit, transactions in NFA firearms,” as the $200 tax stamp “was considered quite severe and adequate to carry out Congress’ purpose to discourage or eliminate transactions in these firearms” in 1934. But the cost of the tax stamp has never been raised or adjusted for inflation.
As discussed here, silencer customers had to wait several months to have their NFA applications processed in the past. But in December 2021 — after lobbying from the NSSF — the ATF debuted a new online “eForms” system that dramatically sped up approvals. Silencer retailers now boast that they’ve seen same-day approvals for customers. This had led to a recent spike in silencer sales, as Americans now own nearly 5 million silencers.
Between May 2021 and July 2024 — a mere three-year span — Americans accumulated nearly as many silencers as were registered in the previous 87 years, since the NFA first mandated their registration. Additionally, groups like the NSSF and the American Suppressor Association have lobbied for bills like the Hearing Protection Act that would remove silencers from the NFA’s requirements and make it easier for people to purchase them.
To learn more about silencers, click here.
unserialized ghost guns
Congress enacted the Gun Control Act (GCA) of 1968 to prevent people from buying mail-order guns like the Carcano bolt-action rifle used in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Jr. The law requires that licensed gun makers imprint serial numbers on their firearms, and that gun dealers record those serial numbers in their transaction records so police can trace the firearm back to its original purchaser if it’s recovered at a crime scene.
According to the GCA, a “firearm” means any weapon “which will or is designed to or may readily be converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive,” as well as “the frame or receiver of any such weapon.” But in recent years, a number of retailers attempted to skirt these requirements by selling nearly complete frames and receivers — the core building blocks of handguns and long guns, respectively — along with jigs, drill bits, and instructions for completing them in minutes. The retailers alleged that these kits were not firearms and sold them without serial numbers or background checks.
Ghost guns quickly became the weapons of choice for criminals, with the ATF estimating that police recovered over 71,000 ghost guns between 2017 and 2022. To respond to this threat, the ATF issued a rule clarifying that “parts kits that are readily convertible to functional weapons, or functional ‘frames’ or ‘receivers’ of weapons, are subject to the same regulations as traditional firearms” and must be sold with serial numbers and background checks. As mentioned, a challenge to that rule is now before the Supreme Court in Garland v. VanDerStok.
Some criminals have instead turned to 3D printing to create untraceable ghost guns, as appears to be the case with this shooting. While firearms can be completely 3D-printed from plastic, it is more common for people to build sturdier firearms today by 3D-printing pistol frames and long gun receivers and finishing the firearms with metal components, such as barrels and slides, made by established gun manufacturers. To learn more, click here.