We should retire the phrase ‘gun control’ as we pursue it

The words tumbled readily from Josh Hawley’s lips as he argued for doing little in the wake of the Atlanta and Boulder, Colorado, massacres.

That’s reason enough not to let them tumble from the rest of ours.

They were Tom Cotton’s chosen term for the laws that reasonable Americans are calling for and that he, in all his trademark compassion, opposes. That makes me triply determined to latch on to different language — and to urge other journalists to do the same.

I’m talking about “gun control,” a phrase whose day should be done. Its day is done, to judge by many prominent Democratic politicians, who have rightly recognized the prejudicial aspect of “control,” with its ring of repression, and moved away from it. You don’t hear President Joe Biden talking about “gun control,” not anymore. The same holds true for other Democrats urging “gun safety,” a preferable coinage, if not a perfect one.

But “gun control” still appears frequently in The New York Times, in The Washington Post, on the CNN website and throughout the news media. It remains as pervasive as guns themselves. It was there — “gun control,” just like that — in the first question put to Biden on Thursday during his first full-fledged news conference as president. And in the second question. And in yet another question later on. It’s like some reflex we can’t shake.

Or maybe we just don’t care to. There’s an argument for “gun control,” absolutely. It’s accurate: The legislation in question entails more government control over who can purchase guns and when and how. “Gun control” is probably the most instantly and widely recognized shorthand for the debate over such laws, and journalism depends on verbal economy.

But it’s off key. It’s unhelpful. And it’s an example of the loaded language that often shapes our discourse on important matters.

Talking about some immigrants as “illegal aliens” or “illegals” casts them in a dehumanizing, sinister light. Calling them “undocumented” doesn’t. That’s why Americans of divergent bents diverge in their language.

About two decades ago, the advocacy group Handgun Control Inc., which had begun in the 1970s as the National Council to Control Handguns, formally changed its name to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. It’s now just Brady. (Brady refers to Jim Brady, who was shot during an assassination attempt against President Ronald Reagan, and Brady’s wife, Sarah.)

I asked Robert Spitzer, a professor at SUNY Cortland who has written five books on gun policy, if “gun control” was so ingrained, so automatic, so generic at this point that it was ipso facto neutral and not a problem.

“I used to say that I study gun control,” he told me. “Now I say I study gun policy.

I’ve changed the way I describe myself.” And while part of that, he said, is about accuracy — he’s interested in all gun policy, permissive as well as restrictive — part of it is the search for “a less loaded term.”

If Spitzer is doing it, why can’t we?

I’ve used “gun control” in several columns over the past two years. In my weekly newsletter several days ago, I wrote “more stringent firearm restrictions” in its stead. I was steering clear of “gun control” only to land in another ditch by the side of the road.

“Safety” is accurate but bland, so I’m in the market for a snazzier vocabulary. All suggestions welcome.