It always seems like when one guy finally works up the balls (or sufficiently beats down the reasonable part of his brain) to go shoot up his school, it gives a few other nut jobs an incentive to do the same thing. But J's right; this probably isn't an emerging trend. But the fact is that it's going to happen every now and then, and no solution has yet been implemented to stop it.
The chief problem with school shootings is response time; most of the time, there isn't going to be anyone with a weapon on campus. Even in Texas, the most gun-happy state in the Union, there's usually only one cop on campus at a time. Campuses who don't have anyone with a firearm handy allow the shooters 5-10 minutes of uninterrupted murdering time before the police arrive.
As far as a solution goes, I'd be willing to allow faculty members to carry their weapon to school, provided they get a special "right-to-carry-at-school" license, which would feature much more stringent passing requirements on the basic gun proficiency tests, a full psych workup, and training in crisis management and hostage situations. Simply knowing that there will be armed resistance will be enough to deter most shooters. If it came down to it, I'd also be willing to allocate money for armed guards at the school. All this may sound like an excessive solution, but the objective is to ensure that it doesn't become a continuing trend. There are always going to be malcontents out there who want to shoot people up; for anyone far gone enough to seriously consider it, the threat of force is the only language that carries meaning.
