The Brian Thompson United Healthcare Hit

Around 0645 on 4 December 2024, the 50-year-old CEO of United Healthcare, Brian Thompson, was walking between the Marriott and Hilton hotels in Midtown Manhattan. It was cold out, and he was early for a presentation he was making to a group of investors. Thompson’s assassin had already been in position for hours. The resulting sordid event was captured on surveillance video. The shooter deftly presented a sound-suppressed handgun and shot Thompson from behind. The victim was hit at least once in the back and once in the calf. The shooter advanced calmly on his target, manually cycling his weapon with each shot while appearing to clear at least one stoppage. Fifteen minutes later, Brian Thompson was dead. One live round was recovered at the scene along with several shell casings. Various sources differ on the details, but supposedly the words Depose, Delay, Deny, or Defend were written on them. Nobody is yet completely sure what that is all about. There had been recent unspecified death threats. Thompson had a private security detail, but he had departed his hotel alone. An Army buddy who now provides executive security for high-end clients said his phone has been ringing constantly since the details broke. The story has rightly captivated the nation.

Motivations

There is just so much to unpack here. Gun-wielding assassins are staples of Hollywood movies. Shooting people looks cool on the big screen. It’s considerably darker in the real world. Brian Thompson left behind a wife and two kids. The American health insurance industry is a bucket of snakes. As a physician, I can tell you that United Healthcare is arguably the hardest with which to deal. They are forever demanding onerous prior authorizations for drugs and services, and their denial rates are the worst in the industry. Meanwhile, under Thompson’s leadership, UHC’s profits increased from $12 billion in 2021 to $16 billion in 2023. All that leaves quite a few regular folks angry with United Healthcare. Responses on social media have spanned the spectrum from outrage to jubilation with everything in between. In aggregate, that all simply illustrates how badly our Information Age society has lost its way.

Details

In the aftermath of the shooting, experts have come out of the woodwork. I’m obviously riding a bit of that wave myself. Sundry commentators have decried the killer to be the elusive legit professional hitman or a rank amateur. I fall someplace in the middle. The shooter exhibited fairly solid fieldcraft. He egressed first on an electric bicycle and then in a cab, dumping his backpack in Central Park along the way. As of this writing, the gun has yet to be recovered. He dropped a burner phone and apparently abandoned enough Starbucks dunnage to provide the cops with his DNA. The authorities know how he got into New York (Greyhound) and where he stayed (a hostel for which he used a fake ID and paid cash). We have a photo of his face because he flirted with a clerk at the hostel. That was dumb, but most everything else about this operation seems deftly executed.  The cops will almost assuredly catch this guy eventually. At that point all of the ghastly details will be laid bare. For now we’re all just guessing. However, I’m fairly sure that some folks have already gotten it really wrong.

Here's an excerpt from Fox News—

Firearms expert David Katz, a former DEA firearms instructor who is now the CEO of Global Security Inc., agreed that the suspect was not a professional, but may have been using a rare pistol. Katz told Fox News Digital that he believes the weapon may have been a bolt action pistol, a "modernized version of a World War II pistol."

"The operation that he does with his hands is consistent with the operation of that weapon," Katz said. "He immediately moved to rack the slide manually with his left hand after he fired. He knew he had to chamber a round every time he fired a shot.”

"And if it is that pistol, it is a very unique pistol and they don’t make that many of them. If it is that gun they will be able to narrow him down to a very small number of purchasers." 

Multiple law enforcement contacts told Fox News that they believed the weapon used in the murder resembled a "Welrod", a bolt action, suppressed pistol first used in World War II.

"I’d bet my pension that this is the weapon that was used on the United CEO. It’s very, very quiet and requires manual cycling after each round is fired. Top choice by pros for up-close, quiet work," the source told Fox News.

I’m no former DEA firearms instructor, but I’d bet my reputation as a professional in the firearms industry that the shooter wasn’t using a 75-year-old British Welrod or a modern NFA-registered clone. The Welrod was a manually-operated, magazine-fed, sound-suppressed pistol designed by the British during World War 2 for just such stuff as this. Offered in both .32 ACP and 9mm Parabellum versions, there were around 14,000 copies produced. These guns saw active service from WW2 through Desert Storm. Nowadays, B&T makes an upgraded modern facsimile called the Station Six available in either 9mm Parabellum or .45 ACP. These are also known as “vet guns” for use in humanely dispatching cattle. However, in the US at least, these are all registered National Firearms Act weapons. Nobody in their right mind would use such an easily trackable gun in a crime.

Reality

What follows is pure conjecture. I could be completely wrong. However, I’ve studied the video closely along with everybody else. I’d postulate that this guy is using an otherwise-unremarkable Browning-style short-recoil semiautomatic pistol. I think he installed a threaded barrel and fitted the gun with a basic sound suppressor without a Linear Inertial Decoupler (LID) or Nielsen Device. Easily 90% of the combat handguns in service today use the same short recoil operating principle pioneered by the Browning P-35 Hi-Power. Compact and reliable, this is a great way to make a gun. However, these Browning-style handguns do not function well with a lot of extra weight on the muzzle. To address this issue, a LID captures a bit of the muzzle chaos and uses it to give the slide a little tap with each shot fired. LID-equipped suppressed handguns are quite reliable. A Browning-style handgun mounting a sound suppressor without a LID must typically be manually cycled with each shot.

Technical Stuff

The speed of sound in dry air is 1,125 feet per second. Anything faster than that is going to produce a nasty audible sonic crack. Additionally, most centerfire handguns have a fairly large bore. That big hole in the end of a sound suppressor lets a lot of racket escape. As a result, many first-time suppressor buyers are disappointed with the performance of their expensive pistol cans. Using subsonic ammo helps to a degree. Length of exposure plays a role as well. Shooting a supersonic round out over a long distance is louder than the same exercise up close. In the Thompson hit, ranges were obviously quite intimate.

Ruminations

My guess is that this guy built his own DIY assassin kit with stuff he ordered online. The diligent criminal can source the components without leaving much of a digital footprint. Buy it with crypto or a prepaid money card purchased with cash and have it shipped to a dead drop address. Heck, if nothing else just have it delivered to a stranger’s house, keep an eye on tracking, and then steal the parcel from his front porch before he gets home from work. All of that is illegal, but we’re talking about a guy willing to kill a man in cold blood. Laws obviously don’t stop people like that. Aftermarket threaded barrels are readily available online. They would be a drop-in fit for any reputable combat pistol. The real issue is sourcing the sound suppressor. It doesn’t take any serious talent to make one. A little time, some YouTube videos, and a decent Harbor Freight lathe would let you build a can from scratch. However, the obvious solution here is a solvent trap. Converting a solvent trap into a functional suppressor without proper NFA registration is a felony. So, is shooting a man in the back in Midtown Manhattan. Laws obviously don’t influence people like this. Leftists are rendered apoplectic by how easy it is to bodge together a sound suppressor at home. However, reality is that advances in 3D printing are about to render gun laws obsolete. The time is coming soon, and may already be here, wherein any criminal with a little cash and some initiative can build anything he wants in his basement. That’s our brave new world. We will have to wait until the killer is caught to learn exactly what he used, his escape path and his motive for this crime. I have zero doubt that he will be brought to justice. Until then though, we are just making educated guesses on what exactly he used.

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