How America normalized the murder of schoolchildren

Don't call them "mass shootings." They are unfathomably more monstrous and devastating than that impersonal, quasi-industrial language suggests.

Santa Fe High School.
(Image credit: Illustrated | KTRK-TV ABC13 via AP)

For some time now it has been obvious that our language is not up to the task of describing current events. Perhaps the most obvious and dispiriting example is the more or less ubiquitous use of the phrase "mass shooting" to refer to massacres such as those that have taken place recently in Nevada, Florida, and now Texas, where at least 10 people were killed on Friday morning at a high school near Houston.

When a euphemism suddenly appears and finds itself universally adopted, it is always worth asking what it is meant to conceal.

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Matthew Walther

Matthew Walther is a national correspondent at The Week. His work has also appeared in First Things, The Spectator of London, The Catholic Herald, National Review, and other publications. He is currently writing a biography of the Rev. Montague Summers. He is also a Robert Novak Journalism Fellow.