(Wired) – In the wake of Luigi Mangione’s alleged killing of a health care CEO with a partially 3D-printed pistol, we built and tested the exact same model of weapon ourselves. And it was entirely legal.

For the last hour, in a backroom of a gun range in Arabi, Louisiana, I’ve been building Luigi Mangione’s gun. Well, not his, in the literal sense. The not-quite-finished firearm in my hands is very much mine: I was the one who pushed “print” on a 3D printer the prior evening and then, this morning, pulled the gun’s finished frame out of that mini-fridge-sized appliance. And I’m the one now struggling with the trickier task of attaching to that precisely contoured chunk of matte-black plastic all the metal and polymer components that will make it a fully functioning, semi-automatic pistol.

This weapon I’m constructing is, however, intended to be an exact clone of the partially 3D-printed gun that Mangione allegedly used to kill UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City in December, down to the stippling on the weapon’s plastic grip. (Read More)