The blood, gore, shell casings and bullet fragments haven't even been removed from the floors and walls of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, but the classification of shooter Nikolas Cruz has begun in earnest. He is said to have been pictured in a MAGA hat in his Instagram profile. No, say others, records show him to be a registered Democrat. He is said to have posted Arabic sayings on social media, perhaps indicating that he is an ISIS sympathizer. No, say others, his posts indicate that he wanted to kill Muslim terrorists. No one claims him. He must, he has to, belong to the other side.

Nikolas Cruz is an American. He lives in a country that glorifies violence. Like many other Americans, he amassed a small arsenal of knives and guns, including an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, which used to be outlawed but is America's most popular weapon. It's designed to kill the maximum number of people as quickly and efficiently as possible, and it does a very, very good job of it. Like every young American, Cruz grew up with school shootings. He was intimately familiar with the security of his former high school. No doubt he was bullied at school. No doubt he posted all kinds of horrific stuff on social media that shocked people who never alerted anyone. Like dozens of other Americans each year, he lived in a black and white world full of supposed enemies against whom he was powerless, so he went about the easy task of amassing the tools he needed and then, in minutes, he slaughtered them.

We Americans like to think that Nikolas Cruz is an exception. But we do literally nothing to ensure that. We glorify murder and mayhem. We covet and fetishize weapons designed only for murdering other human beings. We do nothing--nothing--to halt access to these weapons, thereby liertally putting our children and every other American in harm's way. We look the other way when people are bullied or post obvious signs of their mental desintegration online. Until we decide to make him one, Nikolas Cruz is no exception, and we are his helpmate.