The term Black Friday has a new and darker meaning this year when three people were killed on the shopper’s savings day.

Two men shot and killed each other inside a Toys R Us in Palm Desert, Calif., after two women got into a fistfight. Police have said the incident was probably not related to a dispute over a purchase, but two people shot each other in the middle of a toy store on the biggest shopping day of the year. Something isn’t right.

The economy is suffering, people are looking to save money as the holiday season approaches but shooting each other in a Toys R Us hardly seems civil. Nor does trampling a Wal-Mart clerk in Valley Stream in Long Island, Ny.

“He was bum-rushed by 200 people,” co-worker Jimmy Overby, 43, said in the New York Daily News. “He was trampled and killed in front of me. They took me down too … I literally had to fight people off my back.”

Trampled by people as he opened the doors at 5 a.m. on Black Friday. Trampled by people trying to save a few dollars.

If Black Friday is any indication, society has sunk to a new low.

Granted, the shopping day in most places around the country was fairly civil. But American shoppers who put early-morning savings ahead of people’s lives need to step back and reprioritize. Regardless of economic suffering, retail savings shouldn’t cost people their lives.

“Customers stepped over him and became irate when officials said the store was closing because of the death,” MSNBC reported of the Wal-Mart incident.

Irate because they couldn’t make their purchases. Irate and selfish and unaffected by the death of a man.

Consider how this holiday season will be for that Wal-Mart clerk’s family. No amount of money they saved on gifts for their loved ones will be enough to fill the loss of their brother, son or friend.

Here is a lesson for the future: no bargain or sale is worth endangering another person’s life. For all those who were out waiting at 4 a.m. for stores to open, exercise some patience and use common sense. Be prepared to be angry and frustrated at various times throughout the day.

In times like these — and in the economic hardships this country will surely face in the upcoming years — America must behave rationally, and avoid acting like barbaric, greedy savages.