Recent steps by area school officials to ensure students are safe should be good news to patrons and parents in light of the recent deadly Uvalde, Texas, massacre.

It is a deeply tragic fact that school shootings have become a part of our national consciousness, and the death toll continues to rise every year.

In Texas, 19 young students — children — were gunned down in yet another senseless binge of carnage and butchery.

The school shooting phenomenon is a huge subject, rife with competing theories, views and fewer solutions but the push to increase security in schools across the region — in places like Union or Wallowa counties — should bring a degree of comfort to parents and students.

Schools have added cameras, key cards and limited access over the past few years and learning centers have established protocols to respond to an emergency situation. Annual training of staff and drills for students are also another positive feature added at area schools.

Police are also deeply involved with mitigation efforts. For example, in La Grande, the police routinely add an extra patrol to school zones during the morning drop-off period.

That school and police officials are focused on such security measures is a good sign for our great communities.

The bigger question, though, is what can be done to stop the school shooting phenomenon. Punitive gun control measures are frequently mentioned as one step to stop the massacres but that suggestion is so loaded with local, state and constitutional issues it seems like too big a leap.

Better mental health infrastructure for youth appears to be a viable answer but, again, questions remain about how to implement such steps over a nationwide canvas.

There are plenty of laws on the books regarding guns and a fair question to ask is do we need even more such edicts?

Perhaps the question is too big, the implications too complicated to be solved easily or at all.

It seems, though, that for a nation that sent men to the moon and created grand infrastructure masterpieces should be able to find a method, a way forward, to eradicate school bloodbaths. We are a nation built on the ability to use ingenuity and know-how to achieve great things, yet we seem unable to collectively solve an ongoing problem such as school shootings.

Widespread and punitive gun control measures are not the answer and unconstitutional to boot. Yet, is there no other way to solve this ongoing problem?