This was a topic on local talk radio this week.

Video cameras? Armed guards? Auto-lock doors? Nothing?

Personally, I'd avoid putting armed guards, metal detectors and other security measures in schools. I don't want armed police officers in high schools at all times. We can't create a police state just because a few people act nuts every now and then. This is not an epidemic, this is random and unpredictable.
My thoughts aren't cohesive here, but this is worthy of discussion

I think that teachers, parents, and other students should be more aware and involved in what kids are doing. It seems that whenever these things happen, it's always the 'outsider' or kid who 'always wore black' or 'was fascinated with death' etc. I mean, I read an interview with one kid who said he tried to befriend this latest shooter because he thought he looked cool and maybe needed a friend, but when he talked to the guy, all he talked about was guns and killing people. These are warning signs, and I think people need to be more in tune with them before something like this happens. Has anyone seen the Flash animation this kid did a few months ago? I mean, how much more of a signal does someone need?

Well apparantly armed guards and metal detectors dont work, since this kid blew by the, killing the guard.

Education, not martial law. Guidance. The kids was OBVIOUSLY going to do something. That flash was so dead on to what actually happened.

Not a lot, if anything, can be done unfortunately.

In the way of physically stopping the person, no.

And mentally, no, not a lot can be done either. Especially in this case. Everyone in the town was dirt poor. How can they be concerned about his state of mind when they're struggling to feed their families.

That's definitely a tough one. I don't like the armed guards idea. Seems that you could look for warning signs, but then you end up arresting kids for writing stories about zombie attacks. It seems to me most of these incidents root from the perpetrator feeling rejected and picked on. Creating an environment in schools that is more aware and tolerant of diversity is an idea, but I'm sure they're already trying that. Ultimately I think the answer lies at home, with the parents.

The guard at his school was unarmed, though he did go through the metal detectors.

Where I work, any and every potential warning sign is reported to the counseling staff, and a call is made home to parents. This includes anything from medical problems to sexual harrassment to eating disorders, etc. It takes an enormous amount of time, sadly, because adolescents throw things that amount to false warnings out with casual abandon.

I would say that I see a lot of students go by who show enormous numbers of warning signs that are brushed off by parents as them "just being kids." I also hear a lot of "well, I just don't know what to do..." The amount of action schools can take is severely limited until an actual recordable event occurs. By then, it's usually too late. I think that a lot of school violence, or maybe adolescent violence in general, correlates to a cultural unwillingness to address any negative issue involving children (especially our own)...sometimes even after the fact.

A culture of "cool" will always create insiders and outsiders. In the latter group, when all the right factors are in place, we'll have ourselves a school kid who may have homicidal tendencies, and among this smaller group, someone who may actually act on them.

How are these outsiders treated by the insiders? What are the socio-economic issues that surround them? What kind of a support group do these people have? How are they treated by their families and the school? How does the public, in particular the mass media, portray them? And it just needs to be said: do they have access to firearms, and why is this so?

My point is this. A complete focus on only one facotr, on pathology, gun control, economic wellbeing, social exclusion, media influence or any other factor is simply not going to work.

I'm all for loads of machine gun nests and concertia wire. Maybe then the young people of America will start giving a damn about their civil liberties and the government. I can't imagine a mounted machine gun requiring more than a few minutes of instruction to attain an acceptable level of competency.

Well said.

Ban & destroy all guns & firearms.

Just a question: Do these "school-shootings" take place in other countries than America? I can't recall a single one in Norway for the time being.

It seems like a better control of who has guns needs to be introduced. I don't know how, since I do not know what it's like to go to school in America.

There was one in Germany in 2002 that was worse than Columbine, I believe.

School shootings are rare as it is. If it becomes common place, then maybe we should think about tougher measures to prevent it. We can't force parents to start parenting, and we cannot stop bullys from being ass holes, and we cannot stop people from listening to shitty music. I can live with one school shooting a year.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1952869.stm

I remember it now that you mention it.

Until it happens at your kid's school.

Yeah, so when there's no guns maybe next time they'll use pipe bombs instead. Getting rid of and destroying firearms isn't going to solve anything. If someone really wants to harm other people they're going to do it regardless if they can get their hands on a gun or not.

Or at your school/neighborhood/any public place?