These criticisms may have some validity, and if emergency response to horrendous evolving events on college campuses can be improved, by all means those improvements should be done. 

But, let's get real here! A crazed student determined to kill as many students and faculty as he could was already on the campus firing weapons and killing people. At that point prevention was out of the question, Even the most level-headed, efficient response would not have been likely to save anyone's life that day. And, if I'm wrong, and some lives could have been saved, then let's pay attention to how things should have been handled better and could be handled better if, God forbid, similar events were to occur in the future on that or any campus. Still, all of this is missing the most important issue of all about the Virginia Tech massacre and all other such events, such as Columbine High School, and more recently, Fort Hood.

Doesn't anyone care that the entire massacre could have been prevented? The killer's English professor, a lady who also happened to be Dean at Virginia Tech, knew, more than one year before the massacre, that the student who later did all the killings was a dangerous person. As his English professor, she had read writings by this student that suggested a serious threat to public safety. She knew that something should be done about him. She went to faculty members, to meetings of university officials more than once, and to the local police. Everyone agreed and told her that nothing could be done because the killer had not yet killed anyone.

This is outrageous! In California there is a law that a psychiatrist can go before a judge and request a 3-day psychiatric hospitalization for evaluation of a person deemed to be an imminent threat to the lives of others or themselves. The "hold" can be lengthened by the court to a total of 14 days at a second hearing after the three days. That California law is good, but not good enough. It should be the law in all states and all countries that anyone reasonably thought to be a serious threat to public safety can be evaluated, voluntarily or not, medically and psychologically to evaluate the severity and likelihood of the threat to public safety that such persons represent. This law, which I call the Peace Law in my recently published book The Peace Prescription, should allow a court to order not only the evaluation, but the treatment and even detention, when necessary, of such persons for public safety reasons.

How can we continue to allow massacres of innocent people by crazed persons who are already known to have threatened to murder others or who have made verbal and/or written statements that indicate the likelihood of such behavior?

Violence by an individual is certainly a form of war. What if such a murderer could obtain a nuclear weapon? There is no level of violence or war that we should tolerate. That means you and I have to take a stand for the Peace Law, or be satisfied with continued massacres on and on into the future. You, I, our families, our dear ones, our friends, could be the victims of such completely preventable murders. Will some murders occur anyway? No doubt. Let's reduce the number to as close to zero as we can get.