Let us not be distracted by the question of what label to apply to the horror of these murders

The horror of the killings in Plymouth is intensified by the rarity of this kind of violence in Britain. The US is inured to mass shootings by disturbed young men allowed access – by a misreading of the young republic’s idealistic constitution – to the most appalling weapons. For us, after the ban on most guns in the wake of the Dunblane killings a quarter of a century ago, five murders in one incident is a freak event.

No wonder that there is a struggle to find the right words with which to describe something that seems so outside the British experience. All the elements are familiar from coverage of American shootings: a young man with a history of mental health problems, who identified as an incel – an involuntary celibate – and who fed his hatred of women online, and who was obsessed with guns. The only differences are that in the US he probably would have killed more people, having access to more lethal weapons, and that in the UK he was nearly stopped, having had his gun licence taken away from him.

The inquiry into the killings is bound to focus on the obvious questions. Why was the gun given back to the killer after he agreed to attend an anger management course? Were the killer’s mother’s pleas to NHS mental health services passed on to the police?

But there is a natural desire to reach for stronger language in an attempt to make sense of such banal wickedness. Hence the debate about whether the incident should be, or should have been, called terrorism. This discussion is not particularly helpful, in our view. We all know what the police meant in their early response to the killings when they said that they did not appear to be terror-related. They meant that the killer did not appear to be part of an organisation using terrorist tactics in an attempt to achieve political ends.

This was relevant because it meant that the killer – by then dead – had acted alone: the killings were not part of a coordinated attack such as the 7/7 killings in London in 2005. Such police language is not an attempt to diminish the seriousness of the murders, although Peter Fahy, the former chief constable of Greater Manchester Police, made an important point when he said: “When we give high publicity to these cases, which is inevitable given the size of the tragedy, the trouble is it puts thoughts in other people’s minds. We must be careful we don’t build these people up too much.”

Clearly, there are elements of terrorism in a case such as this. Some of the incel subculture on the internet has an ideology, or overlaps with right-wing, fascistic or extreme anti-government ideologies, and is capable of radicalising people. Equally, some of the psychological traits of the disturbed loner – especially misogyny – are shared by the members of avowedly terrorist organisations.

However, these questions of definition and terminology feel like a displacement activity, and a distraction from the need for clear thinking about the policy response. The answers to the more obvious questions are not changed by whether the crime is labelled as terrorism or not. Nor does it seem to require hindsight to conclude that a gun licence should not have been renewed for someone who had been accused of assault and who had problems with anger management.

The more difficult questions are the perennial ones of the better working together of public agencies, and the better flagging of known warning signs. Beyond that there are questions that must be asked about whether any “sport” that requires pump-action shotguns is justifiable.

In answering those questions, the word “terrorism” is unnecessary. Let us focus the debate on the substance, rather than the terminology.