this post was submitted on 06 May 2025
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Luigi Mangione
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Drag has been saying the gun was planted for months and got banned from !news@lemmy.world for it.
yeah I saw that lmao. I thought "drag got banned for an opinion I had ๐"
I'm open to the possibility. Innocent until proven guilty.
Right now it looks like the gun will be ruled inadmissible because the police have made it impossible to rule out the possibility it was planted. So right now they have basically no evidence to build a case. If there are no more surprises, this will be an easy acquittal.
On the off chance they let this guy go, and don't just ship him out of the country, I'm anticipating a Daredevil Born Again situation where a cop with some Punisher merch decides to off him.
Where would the planted gun have come from? It's a 3D printed gun. The police would have had to run off a similar model in the few days between the killing and Luigi's capture. If you're experienced with 3D printers and already have a couple printers, you could probably pull that off, but that's not the police. I seriously doubt they have people setup for something like that, and institutional inertial would prevent them from spinning it up in the short time required. The learning curve alone would prevent them from having the time.
Nor can they feasibly bring in outside help. "We need you to make a 3D printed gun for us". What do the police need with a 3D printed gun that happens to match the one the shooter used?
Regardless, there's a chain of evidence issue here. That could well destroy the case no matter if it was planted or not.
If it's actually the gun used in the murder, it may have been found previously. It's a disposable weapon, after all. They may have found the gun in NYC and figured they can't tie it to anyone unless it's conveniently found on the person they arrest.
Now I'm not saying that IS what happened, but it very well could have happened. The circumstances behind the handling of evidence have been very suspicious and a little bit too convenient.
Do we know if the gun was present (planted or not) when Luigi was picked up? Or could it have been planted later?
If it was there at the time, I don't see how it could have been planted. They're random cops in Altoona, PA, a town of about 43k people that isn't particularly close to Pittsburgh or any other major metropolitan area. They get a call from a McDonalds that a guy who looks like the perp is munching there. Before rushing to the scene, they grab the 3D printed gun they just happen to have laying around for this scenario?
If it could have been planted in the backpack later on, then sure.
The OP states that the officer searched the backpack on the scene, drove it to the precinct during which time there is no footage for the 11 minutes, and THEN found the gun in the front pocket of the bag while at the precinct.
A lot of dumb coincidences need to line up for everything to so convently work out in the police's favor.
It was only reported to have been found after the officer (with no body cam) got the backpack to the precinct. This was after an initial warrantless search on the site of the arrest
Tbf, squirting out a glizzy only takes like 24hr, roughly, depending on the model, sometimes less. It's entirely possible a cop already had a squirted glock themselves for the purpose of planting, or more likely took one from evidence, or most likely one that never made it in to evidence, off some guy they booked for coke but never put in the gun. Especially considering the lack of bodycam footage, that suggests they could have turned off the bodycam before as well during the arrest in which they sourced the glock.
It's all speculation of course, but I've known a now retired cop that let a few people off of gun charges because the gun was cool and so it just "went missing" and found it's way into his safe. It can and has happened.
And that 24 hour figure assumes it's on an old bed slinger and each part is made on that printer, on a modern corexy it without be even faster . Have they demonstrated that the "found" gun functioned in a timely manner? From what I understand the real bottleneck in production would be from the post processing.
If you have people who know 3D printing, yes. They've tuned their machine to avoid clogs or layer shifts.
I haven't done 3D printed firearms, but I have done foam weapons like the Caliburn, which have some similar issues. You can cram a lot on a bed and then a layer shift ruins the whole thing 16 hours in. If you're experienced and confident in your setup, though, go for it.
Police had 5 days to set this up. They're not going to be able to spin up a print like that in the time involved. Not without people who already had a print farm and experience.
Tbf, who's to say no cop has a 3d printer? Plus, the printed gun crowd is actually a huge part of 3d printing, it's just you're not allowed to talk about it on the normal forums so it has to be kinda hidden. Cops also like guns. I'd be shocked if there weren't a few printers amongst them tbh.
And again, they'd likely just catch some Crab or Slob with a squirted glizzy and take it without filing charges, he complains he gets charges, he doesn't and now we have a "planting gun." The cops don't need to print one, just take it and don't log it.
It's not enough for a few random cops to have printers. They need it done quietly on short notice, then get it to a rando town in PA.
One of the cops in PA could have had one in his house before the shooting, is what I'm saying. Maybe this isn't the first gun those specific cops have planted, even. Maybe it was, and a cop saw the shooting and said "hey I have a printed glock at home, I could grab that and find a similar enough looking guy and make a name for myself." Maybe (again) the cop didn't print it, they took it from someone who did and didn't report it, saving it to plant on someone later.
Is it likely? Probably not, but it could happen. I do literally know a cop who used to take cool guns home and not charge people with having them, I don't see why it couldn't happen again +planting.
Oh with five whole days even a beginner could pull that off. It's not like the old days where a layer shift was a real issue. After looking at the actual STL, anyone could drop it into a modern slicer and hit print with the default pla print profile using autogenerated supports.
If you'll allow drag to speculate, the easiest explanation is that it's not 3D printed. The chief of police said it "might be" 3D printed. The 3D printing is just a scare tactic they were planning to walk back in court while using the media to manipulate the public into fearing him to bias jurors. The gun actually came from a Three Letter Agency's armoury. It's untraceable because they had it scrubbed, like all their weapons. They handed it over to the local cops and said make this look good.
The gun has been identified by the 3D printing community as a Chairmanwon V1: https://coloradoceasefire.org/2025/01/14/luigi-mangiones-ghost-gun-was-only-partially-3d-printed-experts-say/
You really think of the thousands of NYPD personnel, none of them have a 3d printer?
I think none of them are in the right place to quietly produce one on short notice.
They had a whole week before they needed to plant it. That's plenty of time to pop out a quick print that they wouldn't even have to demonstrate could even be fired.
What right place? They could just bring it into the precinct in their bag. Somehow despite doing a quick search of HIS backpack on site of his arrest, the gun wasn't discovered until they got it back to the precinct. Despite supposedly being in the front pocket.
"Right place" as in have institutional connections. They need a guy who can do a complex, multi-part print in a week. If you've never done a complex, multi-part prints before, then no, you're not likely to be successful unless you have knowledge and a tuned printer profile already.
For this to be the way they planted a freshly printed gun, it had to get to Altoona, PA in the time it took to get from McDonalds to the precinct. It couldn't be some plan by the NYPD or FBI since there's not enough time to get the gun there. Unless you're saying the employee who called it in from the McDonalds was in on it. Generally, increasing the number of people in a conspiracy makes for a fragile conspiracy.
Nor do I think it's too likely they could have pulled a 3D printed gun that was already in police custody. NYPD probably does have some in their evidence lockers, but not a 43k population town like Altoona.
Who are these people who own a filament based 3d printer who aren't doing multi part prints?
Like no part of how they handled this search reads as genuine. They didn't find the gun when they searched the bag on site. No buddy can footage for from the cop transporting it. Only after they're back at the precinct do they find the gun in the outer most pocket. AND also he's carrying around an entire manifesto that's written well below his level of education? Plus a bunch of cash - are we supposed to believe he was running away or trying to get caught here?
Police departments regularly get these 3d printed things turned in during gun turn in drives, as opportunists like to print up a bunch of new ones to claim the bounties just to stick it to the man.
Have you done prints of this complexity before? It's not just a few parts at once. It tends to fill the whole bed with small parts. Bad adhesion anywhere can be a problem.
I agree the whole search was hinky. There's a decent chance the backpack will be ruled inadmissible due to chain of evidence issues. If that's the case, the prosecution's case likely falls apart.
That requires nothing more than a couple of cops from a podunk town in rural PA fucking up the whole thing. The idea of a conspiracy to plant a gun is convoluted and unnecessary.
They don't need one that actually works to frame him...
They needed a prop they can stick in an evidence baggy, and can claim it broke after the initial couple shots, if need be.
The defense has access to that evidence and can analyze it. When taken apart, a weapon that was printed in a non-functional state will be different from one that broke during use. Being non-functional might have missing parts or bad fitment or such. A broken 3D printed firearm would have breaks/delamination that tend to be along layer lines. The defense can call an expert to testify and tear the whole case apart.
Only dumb cops would try that. Like the cops in a small rural PA town. We already know they're not that smart because they've likely fucked up the chain of evidence. Except, that alone is enough to sink the case, and we don't need to assume anything about how the gun got there.
You're right! This entire case looks like it was put together by dumb cops.
Is it possible police found the gun nearby the shooting, but never made the evidence public?
I ask because I don't know the intricacies or timeline of the shooting/hunt/arrest/detainment.
Publicising that "someone just killed a CEO with a 3d printed gun, you found the gun and you have no further evidence" might inspire a lot of copycats.