A Popularly Misused Term That A Congresswoman Should Be Careful Throwing Around

In America, we can’t expect much of our elected officials. We can’t expect them to use terms correctly, especially when there’s a potential to use them as buzzwords. This is one that people should be more careful when they throw it around.

Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash

A young man in New York, sadly a homeless man with mental health issues, died after some type of an event on a train. Video shows two men restraining him and one with him in a choke hold. There are more details that the police are investigating.

Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, the famous congresswoman, had called it “Murder.” But, is it?

At this point it’s a homicide, which means, the killing of one person by another. Murder, however, requires an articulate intent to kill someone without justification. So, should the congresswoman be throwing the term around so quickly? No.

When people start rioting over racial issues, and this poor man was black and the others involved white, we should be able to count on our leaders to let the system work. A.O.C. and leaders decrying murder inappropriately could incite the type of violence we’ve seen all too frequently.