Following this story from north of the border, most everyone I know finds your situation in the US puzzling. I'm not trying to be a smart ass about it, but it seems you are in an arms race with your own people and I'm not sure there is any way out.
If you reduce your weapons, the criminals will have the upper hand, and if you place armed guards at schools, I question if you'd be feeding the frenzy. If a nutjob wants to attack a school, I think he will find a way around or through any guard at a school. Is the next step more guards?
I also have no solution.
mat
Life is a series of events and sometimes those series result in tragedies such as the Sandy Hook shooting. Our citizens are not in an arms race with each other. There are folks throughout this country that have all types of beliefs and interests just like all other countries. Gun ownership is just one of those interests. Many people hunt, target shoot, feel they need the ability to self defend themselves or simply like to collect, build etc. When a tragedy strikes that involves a gun our special interest politicians take advantage and impose their narrowed views on the rest of us. Our Founding Fathers granted us the rights and responsibilities of gun ownership because of their fear of subjugation of the citizenry by a tyrannical government;
" the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." The type or restriction of "arms" was never defined.
What led to the Sandy Hook shooting started as a deterioration of a mentally ill individual influenced and surrounded by a desensitized, progressively violent culture perpetrated by Hollywood and the video game industry that sensationalizes killing and violence; he had access to weapons, and unhindered access to
defenseless adults and children.
To say that everyone exposed to violent entertainment will turn into a killer is about as irrational as saying that all gun owners are potential killers, whether they posses a single shot or automatic weapon.
What needs to be done IMO is to increase the care rendered to the mentally ill ( very tall order), deny access to weapons to these people ( secure storage, education etc.), crack down on the already known criminal element to prevent their access to guns ( not the law biding citizen) and
secure soft targets such as schools and hospitals etc. I believe the continued assault on morals, personal responsibility, the continued glorification of violence in movies, television, music and the secular,"me now" society that we live in will continue to foster evil tragedies, the weapons used will be different but the results will be the same.
Replace (fire) one inefficient teacher in every school with an armed guard. I would bet if you fired all the inefficient teachers across the nation we would have more than enough guards. Don't stop there, lets fire 1% of all government staff and use that money; stop funding the UN, and cut off aid to Egypt and we could guard every soft target in our country. And lets start charging every country that benefits from our military umbrella and we could pay off our national debt in 5 years or less! ( I guess that should be saved for another thread)