The following is not the most important aspect of the murder of Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare. But it does illustrate how using the correct words and being conscious of figures of style help avoid confusion.
Technically, a firearm cartridge is made of (1) a casing, which holds gunpowder and a primer to ignite the latter, and (2) a bullet, which is a projectile fitted at the end of the casing. A bullet is thus part of a cartridge but it is not the same thing. Now, a figure of speech called synecdoche consists in using a part to represent a whole (or sometimes the whole to represent a part) like “boots on the ground” to speak of soldiers on the ground. People, especially those not familiar with firearms, may be repeating a synecdoche by saying “bullet” to represent the whole “cartridge,” like Mr. Jourdain was doing prose without realizing it; or they are just confused. Even dictionaries are often not clear. When using this figure of style, one must understand, and be sure his reader understands, that the boots are not marching by themselves and that the cartridge does not leave the gun through the barrel at (or close to) the speed of sound as the bullet does.
A Wall Street Journal story (“Police Zero In on New York Hostel in Hunt for UnitedHealth Shooter,” December 5, 2024), signed by three journalists, mentioned that the killer of Mr. Thompson 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 could the killer write on the bullets when there is not much space on a 9mm (diameter) bullet? If the killer had managed this impossible task, how could have his messages been deciphered after the deformed or fragmented bullets had been fired (“came out of his gun”) and recovered, probably embedded in some object? Or were bullets separated from the casings when the shooter cleared a jam? That’s also impossible. Or is it that the killer more realistically wrote on the casing part of his cartridges? Just yesterday, the newspaper repeated its confusing statement, but dropped the jamming part (“Person of Interest in Killing of UnitedHealthcare Executive in Custody in Pennsylvania,” Wall Street Journal, December 9, 2024, updated 12:31 pm ET).
The journalists were speaking not of bullets but of casings, which are ejected through the ejection port of the pistol slide after each firing (and possibly of one casing still part of a whole cartridge that would have been ejected through the magazine well when a jam was cleared). The police would have found all these on the ground where the shooter stood when firing. Of course, the confusion could have originated from the law enforcement source, but these people have usually seen a pistol in action. It is not impossible that the law enforcement official felt he needed to dumb it down for the journalist, who should then have objected and asked clarifying questions.
The original story in Financial Times was somewhat less obscure (“New York Police Investigate Bullet Casing Inscriptions in Killing of Insurance Executive,” December 5, 2024):
Detectives in New York are investigating inscriptions of “deny”, “defend” and “depose” on bullet casings left at the scene of the murder … according to a person familiar with the case.
The FT at least distinguished the casings from the “bullets,” even if it used the confusing synecdoche as if the casing were part of the bullet instead of being part of the cartridge. If the casing is literally part of the bullet, then the bullet is part of the bullet.
One may say that all this does not matter much. Yet, it would not have been more complicated to use the correct words and avoid any confusion. Incidentally, a Financial Times story of yesterday mentioned that the suspect’s pistol was a home-made (“ghost”) gun, which would explain why it jammed (“US Police Detain ‘Person of Interest’ in UnitedHealth Executive’s Murder,” December 9, 2024). Top commercial semi-automatic firearms do jam, but not often.
Sometimes, a synecdoche is more treacherous and consequential. Saying “the United States” (or “France” or whatever country’s name) “did this or thinks that” to refer to the government of the United States confuses the bullet (the government) with the whole cartridge (the country), as if the government were identical to the country. In political-speak and social analysis, synecdoche is dangerous, perhaps more than metaphor or hyperbole. These figures of speech can hide confusion or propaganda.
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A cartridge is made of a casing (and its internal components) and a bullet
