Nothing but a coward who shot an unharmed man in the back

The path to justice for the cold-blooded, premeditated murder of a health-insurance CEO took a key step yesterday, in the unlikely spot of a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pa. If you’re reading this, you were almost certainly already convinced that murdering anyone, including CEOs, is wrong and that this snot-nosed punk was no hero. From what we’ve learned since yesterday, however, the shooter was born into a life of privilege and could have done anything he wanted with his life. And with all those brains, all that potential, all those opportunities . . . he chose to become a terrorist.

He’s No Revolutionary. He’s a Coward Who Shot an Unarmed Man in the Back

In the end, he just wanted to kill somebody. Allegedly.

Yesterday, police arrested Luigi Mangione in a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pa., and he was charged with murder in New York for the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

There were a million ways that Mangione could have made the world a better place. From what we’ve learned of his life in the past day, he was lucky and gifted, in a lot of ways.

He was born into to a wealthy family.

Mangione is related to a family in Maryland that owns several country clubs, including Haysfield Country Club in Hunt Valley, as well as healthcare facilities and real estate companies in the Baltimore area.

He is the cousin of Maryland Republican Delegate Nino Mangione, who represents parts of Baltimore County.

Mangione’s late grandfather, Nicholas Mangione Sr., was a self-made real estate developer who owned country clubs, nursing homes and a radio station. His grandmother Mary, who died in 2023 from Parkinson’s disease, was described in an obituary as a hospital benefactor and a music patron.

He went to a prestigious prep school.

Mangione graduated from the Gilman School, an all-boys school in Baltimore, in 2016 as the high school valedictorian, headmaster Henry P.A. Smyth confirmed to the school community. He was a leader in a student robotics club and helped design a robot that advanced to the Maryland state finals.

At Stanford University in California, Mangione was a head counselor for a pre-collegiate studies program during the summer of 2019.

Mangione graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2020, a Penn spokesperson confirmed to CBS News. He received a Master of Science in engineering with a major in computer and information science, and a Bachelor of Science in engineering, majoring in computer science with a minor in mathematics.

He interned at Firaxis Games, a Maryland-based studio known for its Civilization series of strategy games, and started working for the online car marketplace TrueCar in 2020, working there until “sometime last year.” Then, apparently, he moved to Hawaii:

Sarah Nehemiah, who knew Mangione during his time living at a co-living/working space called Surfbreak in Honolulu, said he left the community in April 2022 due to a lifelong back injury exacerbated by physical activity on the island.

And then there’s this detail.

In early 2023, Mangione started a book club in Hawaii, Nehemiah said. “Several members left due to discomfort in his book choices. The Unabomber Manifesto is what really pushed people over the edge.”

And this detail.

On the Goodreads website, Mangione’s account contained a four-star rating and review of “Industrial Society and Its Future,” written by Theodore John Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber. Two health care-related books are on his read tab from 2022, including “Crooked: Outwitting the Back Pain Industry and Getting on the Road to Recovery” and “Back Mechanic.”

The kid was a robotics whiz, majored in computer science, worked for a video-game company and a web-based car sales company, and then he signs on with the Unabomber’s anti-technology manifesto.

Curiously, nothing in the alleged shooter’s social-media profiles describes a dispute with an insurance company, although he may have had back surgery. Also note the shooter is age 26. Under the Affordable Care Act, children can be covered under their parents’ health insurance until they turn 26. It’s possible that the young man who shot a health insurance company CEO paid only a few health insurance premiums in his life.

Joseph Kenny, the NYPD chief of detectives, told reporters Mangione had a three-page handwritten document expressing “some ill will toward corporate America.” That document spoke to his “motivation and mindset,” Jessica Tisch, the New York City police commissioner said.

If you’re really interested in aiding the uninsured, there are a lot of ways to help. There are about 1,400 free and charitable clinics in this country; the National Association of Free and Charitable Clinics will help you find the one closest to your location. These clinics receive little to no federal funding. They saw 5.7 million patient visits in 2023, and roughly 1.7 million patients (some patients see the doctor more than once), and 682,000 new patients in 2023. That year, 82 percent of patients were uninsured, 63 percent of patients were employed, and 39 percent were veterans.

You can donate money and encourage others to donate to defray operating costs. You can volunteer. You can donate supplies. Every last clinic would welcome the assistance in any form.

But this guy didn’t do anything like that. Instead, he tracked the movements of the top official in the biggest health-insurance company in the country and shot him in the back.

No, from everything we know so far, Luigi Mangione just wanted to kill somebody.

He’s no folk hero or revolutionary, and he’s not “John Wick-meets-Erin Brockovich.” He’s just another angry, screwed-up young man who wanted to learn what it felt like to take another man’s life, who didn’t even have the courage to look his victim in the face before he pulled the trigger.

From the arrest report, it sounds like he belatedly realized the consequences of his actions and recognized that he’s probably going to spend the rest of his life in prison:

On December 9th, 2024, at 0914 hours, [officers] with the Altoona Police Department were dispatched to 407 E Plank Road, Altoona, for a suspicious male who resembled the male from a recent shooting in New York from December 4th. Officers were advised in the dispatch notes that the male was wearing a medical mask and a beanie.

Upon arrival, Officers were able to locate the male matching the aforementioned description sitting in the rear of the building at a table. He was wearing a blue medical mask and was looking at a silver laptop computer that was placed on the table. The male also had a backpack on the floor near the table he was sitting at. Co-Affiant made contact with the male and informed that Officers were called to the McDonalds for a suspicious male matching his description. Co-Affiant asked the male to pull down his medical mask so he could see his face. The male complied and pulled down his mask; Affiant and Co-Affiant immediately recognized him as the suspect from New York City incident after seeing photos released of him from media sources. Co-Affiant asked the male for identification and provided Officers a New Jersey Driver’s license, bearing the name Mark Rosario and a date of birth 07/21/1998. Affiant took the license and ran the information through the dispatch center. Co-Affiant asked the male if he had been to New York recently and the male became quiet and started to shake. Additional units from the Altoona Police Department arrived on scene to assist Affiant and Co-Affiant in identifying the male.

At this time, dispatch was unable to find any information on NCIC with the information provided by Officers. Lt. Hanelly arrived on scene and also ran the information the male provided to Officers but still found that no record was able to be found. The male was advised that he was under an official police investigation and if he lied out his identity, he would get arrested. The male then stated that his name was The Defendant: Luigi Mangione with a date of birth of 05/06/1998.

If, as his book club and his Goodreads posting indicates, this guy was a huge fan of the Unabomber, then let him share the fate of Ted Kaczynski — another proud product of the Ivy Leagues. The manifesto indicates Mangione is a terrorist. Let him spend the rest of his days in ADX Florence, the supermax federal prison that is the current mailing address of El Chapo, Atlanta Olympics bomber Eric Rudolph, Oklahoma City bombing coconspirator Terry Nichols, Boston marathon bomber and Rolling Stone cover boy Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and a slew of jihadists dumb enough to get caught.

Another detail in the arrest report worth noting:

Officers located a black 3D-printed pistol and a black silencer. The pistol had a metal slide and a plastic handle with a metal threaded barrel. The pistol had one loaded Glock magazine with six nine-millimeter full metal jacket rounds. There was also one loose nine-millimeter hollow point round. The silencer was also 3D printed.

And that, dear liberals, is one of the many reasons why gun control will never work and gun bans will never be enacted, even if you could somehow magically go door to door and confiscate the 400 million to 500 million civilian-owned guns in America. Roughly a million 3D printers ship and sell each quarter. Americans don’t just have lots of guns, they have the capacity to make their own firearms.

We periodically get told we live in an Orwellian surveillance state, with CCTV security cameras everywhere, trackable phones, trackable financial transactions, and so on. And yet, apparently it took an old person at McDonald’s to recognize him.

Also . . . not even one of the suspects’ friends, family, neighbors, or other people who knew him recognized him in the released surveillance video from Starbucks?

This is an assassination that came with its own merchandizing: “Shirts, hats, and wine tumblers bearing words from ammunition found at the scene of Brian Thompson’s killing appeared on shopping sites including Amazon, eBay, Etsy, and Temu.” Lenin famously said, “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which to hang them.” In the end, capitalists ended up selling Lenin souvenirs and tchotchkes.