"I am not going to talk about the vote on that. Because honestly it’s the Sunday before the election and I don’t intend to create an endorsement one way or another around it."

That was Kamala Harris on Sunday, responding to a question about California ballot Proposition 36, a measure to reform the 2014 Proposition 47, which transformed theft of merchandise worth less than $950 from a felony to a misdemeanor. Attorney General Kamala Harris called it the “Safe Schools and Neighborhoods Act,” but the measure launched a wave of car break-ins, shoplifting, and theft of car parts such as catalytic converters. So no surprise that Joe Biden’s  replacement doesn’t want to talk about Prop 36. Harris has always been kinder to criminals than their innocent victims, whatever the gravity of the crime.

On December 2, 2015 in San Bernardino, Muslim terrorists Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik gunned down Robert Adams, Isaac Amianos, Bennetta Betbadal, Harry Bowman, Sierra Clayborn, Juan Espinoza, Aurora Godoy, Shannon Johnson, Larry Daniel Kaufman, Damien Meins, Tin Nguyen, Nicholas Thalasinos, Yvette Velasco, and Michael Wetzel. In a December 17 statement, and a statement one year later, Harris failed to condemn the killers and failed to name a single victim. They included blacks, Asians and Hispanics, but the attorney general failed to call the mass murder a hate crime or even an example of gun violence.

Now Kamala Harris is a disaster and anyone who votes for her is an anti-civilizational, crime-promoting fool.  A vote for her is a vote for more crime.  But I won't criticize her for not using the silly phrases 'hate crime' and 'gun violence.' These are phrases that conservatives ought to avoid. You have to understand that he who controls the terms of a debate controls the debate.  Leftists understand this completely, but conservatives tend to be slow on the uptake. 

See my Nat Hentoff on 'Hate Crime' Laws.

As for 'gun violence,' I have made the acquaintance of many a firearm but not one them has proven to be violent.   Even leftists ought to be able to wrap their heads around the distinction between weapon and wielder. 'Gun violence' is an obfuscatory  phrase the purpose of which is to shift the agency from the wielder to the weapon. I could go one for a couple of pages about what is behind that destructive move. (And you hope I won't.)

As I have said a few times before, language matters, and if you are a conservative don't talk like a willfully self-enstupidated 'liberal.'

See also my The Problem: Gun Culture of 'Liberal' Culture?