In a small town in Florida, a 19 year old named Nikolas Cruz injured 15, and killed 17 on Wednesday — Valentines day. He had been expelled previously and is currently in Broward County jail for his actions. He used the fire alarm to draw out more kids: a greater number of possible targets. According to social media and other reports, his past suggests that he’s always been capable of doing this and apparently he’s been in all sorts of trouble before.

Victims of his rampage took videos of what happened, and the time directly after the perpetrator left. There were high school kids bleeding out onto the blank cliché school tile from being shot; their best friends crying their eyes out for them. What a sad twisted mind he had to have, to do this to his own peers. To think it couldn’t happen in Red Oak is wrong, because this school shooting happened in a small town too.

This year alone, there have been 18 mass shootings, and it’s only February. This is our new reality.

On a holiday, when people should be celebrating, we mourn the deaths of our fellow students, the American flag lowered to half-staff. Let’s pray that America isn’t the land of mass shootings and well-paying jobs.

Let’s keep its dictionary definition: the land of the American dream, where people feel accepted, and aren’t drawn to a place where they forget themselves; where they won’t become slaves to the magnet of resentment and loneliness to the point of committing 17 murders, seemingly with no guilt.