I'll repost from a comment I made on another thread:
Though there is no real reason for the general populace to have so-called assault weapons, they are not the same as the "real" automatic assault weapons the military use. The ban on "assault" weapons is a red herring in the greater argument of gun violence...what to do about the estimated 350,000,000 guns already in ciculation? The Australian "buy back" option has been bantered around...that would not likely be effective in the U.S. since so many guns are unregistered and thus "don't exist". The criminals will not sell back their guns, so that would leave only legally obtained guns owned by law abiding citizens. Sure, some of these legal guns are used by shooters like Adam Lanza, but the majority of gun crime is just that...criminals with illegally obtained guns, they aren't legally allowed to possess, commiting crimes against others.
The greater question is, how can we prevent this type of madness? The vast majority of these mass shooter incidents involve individuals with some form of mental illness. What have we as a country done to treat and help the very individuals we viilianize after the fact when these incidents occur? The guns are the tools of this insanity, but I would venture to say that if no guns were available, these mentally ill individuals would use some other type of weapon to commit their savagery. (ie: the Chinese mass school stabbing incidents) Let's treat the cause, not the effect!
As to armed police/security in schools and public places, this is not a new concept. Many places in the world utilize that option...check out any airport in Europe. Israel had a huge problem with school attacks...until they put armed security in every school. Is this a solution...NO!...but it is a defense until a better answer can be implemented. As a police officer myself, I can assure you that a police officer onsite could have made a difference at Sandy Hook. An article about Columbine having a deputy onsite was posted. The deputies at Columbine did what they were trained to do at the time...wait for back-up and secure a perimeter. Today, all police are trained in the "active shooter" scenario, which is to immediately enter and stop the shooter (read that to mean "kill" the shooter). Would they stop all killing of innocents?...no, but it would stop the kind of wholesale slaughter as seen at Sandy Hook.
There is no easy answer to this...certainly not the lame NRA response, but neither is the Feinstein ban or other gun control laws being proposed as knee jerk reactions. We totally ignore the mental health issues while righteously making guns the villians. I wish I had an answer to the problem of how we handle the plethora of weapons already in circulation...I have read nothing posted on this subject so far that would have prevented the Sandy Hook tragedy.
Therein lies all of our challenge...