The "armed guards" thing has been popular since Newtown, but realistically it's not economically viable to put guards at every school. The only reason you have School Resource Officers in the first place are to deal with rowdy students (reminds me of that time in 9th grade when a student beat the crap out of a teacher and no resource officer in sight), drugs, things of that nature. And, of course, the resource officer is going to be a target of interest for any school shooter. I'm sure Mr. Mercer knew the general location of the unarmed security guards and knew how to avoid them. And if he engages them, it's not like they can do anything. Think back to that FedEx shooting in Atlanta. Unarmed guard got drilled and couldn't do a thing. Air Marshal's don't identify themselves to the general public unless something happens, so why shouldn't we apply the same theory outside of a plane? You know he's there but you don't know who he is, like a bogey-man for terrorists and other miscreants.
I think it bothers people that there are no solutions to these problems. You can't solve these shootings, you can't prevent them. You can study the environments and determine why people act this way, but it's not going to yield any overnight answers. For years now, lead poisoning has been suggested as the cause for violent crime that happened decades ago. Not just here but in Europe too (http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27067615). And there is some belief that violence in inner city / urban areas can be contributed to lead as well. FDR oversaw two housing laws in the 1930's (National Housing Act of 1934 - Housing Act of 1937) and the result was the widespread use of lead paint in low income / urban areas. And even with all of this research, it's still not concrete fact. We might know why these spree killings are happening at a greater rate 20-30 years from now, but it's not going to be solved through knee-jerk legislative maneuvers. Personally, if I were making the calls, I'd have the shooter's brain examined like we're doing with deceased football players nowadays. See if anything stands out. And then do it for the next one, and the one after that, and maybe eventually you have a real answer for why these events happen.
But people will find a way to kill folk. The Bath School Disaster, the guy used dynamite and the only use of a firearm was to detonate explosives used to kill himself and others around him. This was in a period where you could mail order a surplus Maxim machine gun used in the trenches of Europe without a single background check.
:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/cmg/LP6HUYPA4ZHGVESFMI4GT5M2HQ.jpeg)
