I learned about these shootings at about 1 PM. I have spent most of the rest of the day moving from fighting back tears to feeling numb. I wish I could see my 4 grands, ages 3-12, and hug them.

The school is a little more than two hours from my home. It is about a half-hour from where my daughter-in-law and her two sons (my middle grands) lived before she and my son bought a house in RI. I think this is the closest mass shooting to my home. I have always realized that something like that could happen "here." I spent more than 30 years teaching in elementary schools. Some of that time was spent in "open loft" schools where there were no classrooms, just a huge space broken up by dividers similar to those used to form office cubicles. Inside a school like that, there are few classroom doors to lock--just to a few isolated rooms like the office, faculty room, art room, music room, and gym. We did have emergency plans and drills twice a year. If the school was attacked, several classes were to move into each of these rooms. But until they got there, they would be targets for anyone with a gun. We also had evacuation drills--not just fire drills where we left the building and waited at a safe distance, but a drill where we walked through a wooded area behind the school to another street where (in theory) buses would pick us up.

Eliza, the guns used are often used by detectives in the mystery books I read. I'm sure you can find out more by googling them. Apparently they belonged to the mother (and victim) of the suspected shooter.