Synecdoche, bullets and politics – Econlib

The following is not the most important aspect of the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. But it does illustrate how using the right words and being aware of figures of speech can help avoid confusion.

Technically a firearm cartridge is made of (1) a casing, which contains gunpowder and a primer to ignite the latter, and (2) a bullet, a projectile mounted at the end of the casing. So a bullet is part of a cartridge, but is not the same. Now a figure of speech called out synecdoche consists of using a part to represent a whole (or sometimes the whole to represent a part), such as “boots on the ground” to speak of soldiers on the ground. People, especially those unfamiliar with firearms, may repeat a synecdoche by saying “bullet” to represent the entire “cartridge,” as Mr. Jourdain prose did without realizing it; or they are just confused. Even dictionaries are often unclear. When using this figure of speech, you must understand, and be sure the reader understands, that the boots do not march on their own and that the cartridge does not leave the gun down the barrel at (or close to) the speed of sound as the speed of the sound. bullet yes.

A Wall Street Journal story (“Police are searching for a UnitedHealth shooter at a New York hostel“, December 5, 2024), signed by three journalists, stated that Mr. Thompson’s killer had

used a Sharpie to leave coded messages… on bullets that came out of his gun when it jammed, the [law-enforcement] official said.

This sentence is a case of taking a synedoche literally. How can the killer write on the bullets if there isn’t much room on a 9mm diameter lead bullet? If the killer had accomplished this difficult task, how could his messages have been deciphered after the scrambled or fragmented bullets were fired (“came out of his gun”) and recovered, probably embedded in some object? Or is it that the killer wrote more realistically in the film? housing some of its cartridges? Yesterday the paper repeated its confusing statement but dropped the jam part (“Person involved in the murder of a UnitedHealthcare executive in custody in Pennsylvania,” Wall Street JournalDecember 9, 2024, updated 12:31 ET).

The journalists were not talking about bullets, but about enclosureswhich are ejected through the pistol slide ejection port after each firing (and possibly from a casing that is still part of an entire cartridge that would have been ejected through the magazine well when a malfunction was cleared). The police allegedly found all of these on the ground where the shooter had shot. Of course, the confusion may come from law enforcement, but these people have usually seen a gun in action. It is not impossible that the law enforcement officer felt it necessary to cover it up from the journalist, who should then have objected and asked clarifying questions.

The original story Financial times was a little less obscure (“New York police investigate inscriptions on bullet casings in murder of insurance executive“, December 5, 2024):

Detectives in New York are examining the inscriptions “deny,” “defend” and “depose” on bullet casings left at the murder scene … according to a person familiar with the case.

The FT at least distinguished between the casings and the ‘bullets’, even though the confusing synecdoche was used as if the casings were part of the bullet rather than part of the cartridge. If the casing is literally part of the bullet, then the bullet is part of the bullet.

You could say that none of this matters much. Still, it wouldn’t have been more complicated to use the right words and avoid any confusion. By the way, a Financial times Yesterday’s story mentioned that the suspect’s gun was a homemade (“ghost”) gun, which would explain why it jammed (“US police have arrested a ‘person of interest’ in the murder of the UnitedHealth Executive”, December 9, 2024). The best commercial semi-automatic firearms jam, but not often.

Sometimes the apparent use of synecdoche is insidious and more consequential. When you say “the United States” (or “France” or whatever name) “did this or thinks that” to refer to the government of the United States, you are confusing the bullet (the government) with the whole cartridge (the country), as if the government was identical to the country. In political language and social analysis, synecdoche is dangerous, perhaps even more so than metaphor or hyperbole. They can hide confusion or propaganda.

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