Can We Get A Better Description Than ‘Active Shooter’?

Calling Sunday night's violence at the Mall an "active shooter situation" wasn't entirely wrong...

...but it really wasn't correct either.

I understand in the heat of the moment there is no time to worry about semantics, but saying we had "shots fired" at the mall may have caused a little less stress than saying we have "an active shooter".  Here's the definition according to the Department of Homeland Security:

The United States Department of Homeland Security defines an active shooter as "an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area; in most cases, active shooters use firearms and there is no pattern or method to their selection of victim-Wikipedia

I guess you could squeeze Sunday night's fight into that definition, but when most of us heard the term "active shooter" we expect to hear about a person randomly shooting people just to shoot people. We are CERTAINLY glad it wasn't that.

In case you were unaware, the situation actually was a shoving match between two groups of teens that got out of control when somebody popped off a couple of shots. It could have been gangs, but it mostly just looked like regular teens misbehaving.

Still, kudos must go out to everyone who posted warnings on their phones and also to the Mall employees who sheltered people or let them out the backdoor to safety. Many of these Mall employees could have just bailed out of the situation but they helped people first.