There is an openness to ideas that will work to keep schools safe in the wake of a Texas school shooting Friday that killed 10 people, nine of whom were students, at Santa Fe High School, state Attorney General Ken Paxton said Saturday.
"We can't just let our kids be sitting ducks," Paxton told Fox News' Neil Cavuto.
"I don't think it's just about preventing people from accessing guns because that's not going to be enough, We've got to figure out a way to prevent people from getting in our schools."
Some of those ideas would include the use of "technology to our advantage," said Paxton. "We have to, I think, arm more people at our schools, [either] professional law enforcement or teachers."
"We can talk about gun regulation all day long, but I don't want to spend forever talking about gun regulations when we're risking our students and not providing protection," said Paxton. "That needs to happen quickly.
Paxton said Gov. Greg Abbott plans talks with other officials to try to come up with solutions.
The attorney general also discussed the news that the 17-year-old accused shooter avoided shooting people he liked, so they could tell others what had happened.
"A lot of times in these cases almost every time the shooter is deceased, either kill themselves or they're shot by law enforcement or somebody else," said Paxton. "In this case, it is going to be interesting to have the opportunity to interview him and talk to him, and try to understand exactly what was going through his head when he did this and what his motives were and why he shot who he shot."
Meanwhile, advanced protective devices and methods don't come cheap, Cavuto noted.
"There are alert systems in the schools so people more quickly now, training what to do and how to act, teachers, administrators, and maybe even students, just so a little bit of time may end up saving lives," said Cavuto. "Here certainly, you had people on the scene that could return fire. Little changes might give them a bit more opportunity to react more quickly and basically stop this or at least make the damage a lot less."
Paxton also said that he does not know that it would be the right idea to examine social media posts before shooters get a gun and launch attacks, but at the same time, it's important to look at everything.
"It certainly should be looked at as the legislature conditions our options and certainly the debate will be about free speech and whether that's going too far," said Paxton. "I think that the debate should be had and that's what I like about representative government. We actually get to put this stuff on the table, you know, hear the down side and the up side and the debate needs to happen and figure out whether that's the best way with that process."
Friday's attacks marked the ninth fatal school shooting of the year, and Paxton said he believes the issue is "societal."
"You know, we have problems with families, we have problems with mental illness, it's clearly a problem with our culture," said Paxton, "but I also think that we can more quickly address some of this. We at least need to quickly figure out a way to arm people at the school so at least they know that there's a deterrent and lets people know, 'Hey, you come into this school, there is a possibility you're not going to get through.'"