On February 14th, 2018, a day meant to showcase love became a tragedy.  The gunman, Nikolas Cruz, opened fire on groups of students at Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida.  Cruz was a former student who was expelled for “disciplinary reasons” and is being charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder. In addition to the 14 students killed, three school faculty members were killed in the attack, and fifteen more students were wounded.

Prior to the shooting, Cruz posted on social media that he was aspiring to be a school shooter, but these claims were not taken seriously by the FBI, and they were not reported to local authorities. Before he was expelled, Nikolas Cruz was suspended for having bullets in his backpack, and was described as “the kind of kid who would do something like this.” Despite this, the lawyer working on behalf of the family he was living with said he was someone who, while depressed due to his father and mother’s passing, did not exhibit “obvious violent tendencies.” His mother passed away last November from pneumonia.

He was also a known member of a white nationalist militia and participated in the group’s paramilitary training drills. Cruz legally owned an AR-15 rifle, the same rifle he used in the shooting. This same gun was also used by Adam Lanza in 2012’s Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, where 20 elementary school students were killed.

Unfortunately, this is already the 8th shooting this year to have resulted in injury or death and it’s only February.