Yeah, there are just some circumstances that make it more difficult to remove the emotional component of an issue. The Columbine massacre is one such circumstance.
Emotion likewise works against the measures that would go furthest in actually preventing such tragedies. Namely, changing the strict prohibitionist stance about firearms on school grounds. If a properly vetted and trained teacher or administrator had a gun, these terrible situations could be stopped before dozens are killed. But people cannot get over the seemingly counterintuitive notion of deliberately introducing guns, they can only think in terms of how to keep them away (obviously we can't).
Take the Virginia Tech massacre. Here even students could have been armed. It doesn't guarantee that nobody will be hurt or killed, but he definitely would not have had the freedom to roam the halls emptying several magazines into utterly defenseless and corralled victims. The irony is that a nearby college had an incident not long before the VT massacre, where two students did produce firearms and halted the gunman from any further violence. It's simply impossible for the police to respond to such a rapidly unfolding situation until it's essentially too late. Large college campuses like VT have their own police force dedicated to the geographic confines of the campus, yet even they could not get there quickly enough. Until Nokia invents a force field projector, the liberal mantra about carrying a cell phone will remain laughable.