Boeing is a private company in the sense that its stock is owned by private indviduals as opposed to entities like Amtrak, USPS, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, etc, which are companies that are owned by the government. That is it's a private sector company (vs public sector or government).
It's an admittedly weird overloading of the term "private company" but it's a useful thing to know about - usually context clues can help, but definitely gives me a pause when I encounter the term.
I agree contacts please help a lot, but in this case the context was someone that thinks companies casually murder people and that Boeing is de facto socially owned because of the influence that Boeing has. I'm not sure how oversized influence on government translates to citizen ownership, but asking for coherence is probably too much.
think using the full terms publicly/privately traded can help a lot in this area.
It's also worth noting that "killing people for profit" is not limited to murder: companies kill people all the time - rarely in the form of murder, less rarely in the form of homicide (think security and military contractors), commonly in the form of gross negligence, safety violations, and polution.
If someone thinks that building bombs or killing via pollution is evidence for homicide, they are making a gross category error. The former has very little bearing on the latter.
It's an admittedly weird overloading of the term "private company" but it's a useful thing to know about - usually context clues can help, but definitely gives me a pause when I encounter the term.