[Orig to FB]
“Active shooter” is one of those phrases we should stop accepting, like “pro-life.” Pro-life doesn’t really mean pro-life, it means forced-birth. The sleepy phrase “active shooter” is itself a part of how, as a country, we’ve come to accept this kind of violence. So let’s take a moment unpack the phrase.
“Active” as opposed to what? The normal answer would be “passive,” but a passive shooter isn’t a real thing, so the real answer is probably some baroque militaristicky euphemism like “inactive” — like what you get after you “neutralize” an “active” threat.
“Shooter”? Seriously? Is that really the best US culture can do? For a country with such a rich tapestry of gun craziness and the world’s foremost PR machinery, we have an amazingly meager vocabulary for talking about these people: shooter, gunman, and, what, maybe assailant? (I’m leaving out words like “marksman” because real marksmen shoot at targets.) The US should have as many words for people who guns against each other “as eskimos have for snow,” as the old (and wrong) saying goes.
The things the phrase “active shooter” doesn’t convey are what matters: the emotional nightmare, the sheer violence, the raw terror, the hopelessly troubled person who’s a product of a deeply broken society, the institutional alienation, the ridiculous political clusterfuck perpetuated by inconceivably corrupt and cynical forces, the vile mediasphere that profits from throwing gas on this fire, and lasting trauma for everyone exposed to these horrors.
I don’t know what we should call these people, but the collective process of answering questions like that can be pretty fruitful. Why? Because bureaucratic euphemisms like “active shooter” designate things rather than describing them. It’s like filing Pandora’s box under BOX or a can of worms under CAN — it makes a point of missing the point.
I don’t know how rethinking that phrase will contribute to solving this problem, but you can be sure that if we ever do solve it, the solutions will involve new ways of thinking about it. Names are a good place to start because everyone can start there.