The fact that murder had happened at Virginia Tech was clear within hours, if not minutes, of initial reports. Yet plenty of media figures could not bring themselves to say that the killer was a killer, that the murderer was a murderer. Instead, they used "shooter," a weirdly neutral term that practically sounds like a skilled trade. To call someone a "shooter" is to say he was holding a firearm that discharged, but to imply nothing about any moral choice involved or the fact that it's bad to aim a pistol at a helpless person and pull the trigger. Same goes for the word "gunman," also used frequently by journalists and pundits.
Concluding lines:
Evil exists and must be spoken of as evil, not in euphemism. On a windy Monday morning in Virginia, evil armed itself and performed the most despicable of acts: pleasure in the taking of innocent life. Evil will arm itself again. As George Orwell showed, unless we call a thing what it is, we can neither think about it clearly nor oppose it.
(HT: Mere Comments)
