In politics, it seems everyone has a different phrase to call american terrorists, except for “terrorist”.

Mass shooter, murderer, lone wolf and gunman are all titles many news outlets branded Stephen Paddock, the latest domestic terrorist in the U.S. This has been the case with the Charleston Church shooting and the Aurora movie theater shooting. So why do the news outlets not call them what they are?

“No,” Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo said simply when he was asked if the Las Vegas shooting was an act of terrorism. “Not at this point. We believe it’s a local individual. He resides here locally.“

Since when did terrorism have to come from outside the United States? In fact The Nation Institute’s Investigative Fund and The Center for Investigative Reporting found that there were almost twice as many terrorist incidents by right-wing extremists (115 attacks) than by Islamist extremists (63 attacks) in the U.S. from 2008 to 2016. These events are swept under the rug because they are often smaller than the elaborate plans often seen by ISIS or similar organizations, but they are still terrorist acts. Many say that American extremist groups like the Ku Klux Klan aren’t terrorist organizations.

In May, a man in Portland,Oregon harassed two black girls who were wearing hijabs. When people tried to intervene, he stabbed them and ended up killing two men. He was called a murderer. In Edmonton, Canada, an islamic extremist from Somalia attempted to hit pedestrians on the street. This resulted in four people being injured but luckily no deaths. This was called terrorism. So what is the difference between the two? The man from Portland was a known white supremacist, and was definitely planning on causing harm. How is he different from islamic extremist terrorists?

“Violence by minorities is characterized as terrorism, and therefore requiring more resources and more attention, but violence against minorities somehow doesn’t merit that same attention or resources,” former FBI agent Michael German said. “That is where we see overt discrimination.”

The definition of a terrorist from Dictonary.com is “the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes,” yet people seem to forget this when the terror itself comes from an American citizen. It is important to call terroristic acts what they are, and not to just label foreign attacks as terrorism. As the saying goes: if it walks and talks like a duck, it is a duck. We owe it to those affected to call terrorist out, not give them a softer title.