Luigi Mangione

Sandy Hook was supposed to be the tipping point in our national conversation about mass shootings. This wasn’t a shopping mall or movie theater. It wasn’t a high school. We could imagine this happening at a high school. We had seen that before. But we could not imagine anyone shooting six-year-olds. It was so monstrous that it seemed beyond the realm of possibility. Since that day, 13 years ago, the killings have continued and their settings have shifted. Earlier this month, a gunman opened fire at a Turning Point USA event, fatally shooting conservative commentator Charlie Kirk. In the past year or so, 15-year-old Natalie Rupnow killed a teacher and a fellow student in Madison, Wisconsin, before taking her own life. Solomon Henderson opened fire in a Nashville school cafeteria.

There were lots of shocked people when state terrorism charges against Luigi Mangione – the man accused of murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson – were dismissed on Tuesday. I wasn’t one of them. As the partner of a homicide victim and an advocate for victims for more than 20 years, I’ve seen firsthand how New York’s penal code is a disaster. It doesn’t just fail victims; it rewards predators. It protects the violent. It gives them loopholes and light slaps on the wrist. And then we all act surprised when killers like Mangione benefit. Here’s a reality check that most people don’t know: punching someone in the face is not considered assault in New York. It’s classified as “harassment” – not even aggravated harassment.

In July’s Spectator, I covered the peculiar case of individuals supporting Luigi Mangione, now in custody for the public murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. A month later, Lara Brown wrote about the similarly curious trend of people falling in love with online chatbots. Neither of us, I think, ever imagined that there could be a situation in which both of these stories would combine. Yet it looks like nothing about our dystopian world can surprise me anymore, because I have discovered it is indeed possible. A woman has fallen in love with a Luigi Mangione chatbot.

Six months before being shot in the neck and murdered, the popular conservative commentator Charlie Kirk retweeted our study on political violence in America. Warning the nation that assassination culture was spreading amongst the left, Kirk highlighted our study showing that 48 percent of politically left-wing respondents in a recent poll said it would be at least somewhat justifiable to murder Elon Musk. He noted, too, that 55 percent of them also believed the same about killing President Trump. And, most acutely, he highlighted that this is the natural outgrowth of a left-wing political culture that has tolerated violence for years. Sadly, tragically and unbelievably, we learn that he has become its latest victim. Left-wing violence is still being normalized.

Shane Tamura walked into a lobby on 345 Park Avenue on July 28 and opened fire on the crowd leaving work. He was mentally unwell, angry about football giving him head injuries, and wanted to target the NFL Headquarters to enact his revenge. But he got off at the wrong floor, and ended up spraying bullets into a group of office workers unaffiliated with the sports organization. Then it became clear that one of these victims, Wesley LePatner, was CEO at a large investment company. And when the followers of the prophet Luigi Mangione heard the news, they had a different take: an accident is just what they want you to believe. Before she died, the 43-year-old LePatner was the CEO of Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust in New York.

When a white mom called a black kid the N-word the immediate expectation was that she’d be canceled, possibly arrested. It was not that just a few days later she would have $700,000 in the bank.Shiloh Hendrix accused a five-year-old Somali boy of rummaging through her diaper bag in Rochester, Minnesota, last week. “Did you call that child the N-word,” a man who filmed her asked. “Yeah,” Shiloh snarled back, “if he’s gonna act like one.”She didn’t back off. She repeated the accusation, then turned on the man filming her with a string of insults. The video quickly went viral. But Shiloh didn’t follow the usual playbook of hunkering down to weather the online storm. She fought back. On GiveSendGo, Shiloh painted herself as the victim.

Luigi Mangione has yet another day in court. A fresh collection of glamorous perp walk photos will emerge. Sexy orange-jumpsuit clad come-hither glances are forthcoming. This will surely appeal to his many fans – his stans – who’ve been dying to get a fresh look at their alleged murderous dreamboat. Luigi’s re-emergence comes at the end of an extraordinary week where the American left embraced a rogue’s gallery of villains so ridiculous that they almost seem fictional. You have Mangione, accused of shooting a healthcare CEO in cold blood; Mahmoud Khalil, who faces deportation for his role in Columbia's radical protests; and the latest entry into the sinister sweepstakes, Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was gunned down by Luigi Mangione in New York City on December 4. Surveillance footage hit the internet within hours. Wild speculation spread about the strange gun in the killer’s hands. The elongated barrel, the chamber movements that signaled repeated gun jams, the lack of recoil. Was it a veterinary euthanasia gun? As it turned out, it was a homemade gun, commonly known as a “ghost gun," printed using 3D technology. And, as the furore over Mangione dies down, it’s his weapon that remains the subject of violent disagreement and debate. Two months before Thompson’s assassination, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the great ongoing ghost gun case — Garland v. VanDerStok.

Congress is once again trying to avoid a holiday-eve government shutdown by ramming through a last-minute continuing resolution to fund the government through the new year. The process, per usual, is angering various factions within the House of Representatives as Democrats, budget-hawk Republicans and the establishment GOP are at odds over how much to spend and what to spend it on and whether or not to raise the debt ceiling.Johnson’s “Plan A,” which was a 1,500-page boondoggle negotiated primarily with Democrats, would have funded the government until March.