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Luigi Mangione probably used a ghost gun. Aren't we outraged? | Kelly

2 0
20.12.2024

Just in time for Christmas and Hanukkah and Kwanzaa and the winter solstice and New Year’s, Republicans and Democrats find themselves face-to-face with a problem they can actually solve together.

They can outlaw so-called “ghost guns” like the one used to kill a health care executive recently in New York City.

Imagine that. A genuine end-of-the-year opportunity to do something for the common good — something that transcends cultures and religions and politics.

Yes, dear reader, I know what you are thinking: Our nation’s political system is so broken that Republicans and Democrats barely speak to each other. So actually solving a problem — well, that may take a miracle.

But this is a season of hope, right?

Ghost guns are virtually untraceable. They can be made at home, from plastic-like materials on a 3D printer. They look like toys. And prospective shooters can even pick a favorite color, with choices ranging from tennis ball green to Barbie pink.

But these guns are definitely not toys. And we all know what ghost guns can do. We saw one in action on the morning of Dec. 4, when a hooded, masked man stepped from the predawn shadows on a sidewalk in midtown Manhattan and killed a health care executive with a shot in the back.

The killing of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson shocked America in ways that were not so surprising — and yet deeply surprising and cause for some sort of social examination of what our nation has become.

The brutality, captured on surveillance video, was certainly appalling. But so was the cheering by many Americans who felt that the nation’s system of private health insurance was so broken that corporate health care executives deserved to die.

The alleged killer, Luigi Mangione, a 26-year-old computer whiz who grew up in a wealthy family in the Baltimore........

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