That's a linguistic battle that's hard to win. Calling someone a "criminal" or a "magician" is equivalent from a language standpoint -- both are labels referring to a subset of people.

Trying to be more precise to make a relevant point is more work and comes across as pedantic and annoying, like "birthing people". You can argue that it's more correct and better in some sense, but logic doesn't always win when it comes to language.