I have the solution to eliminate school shootings across the United States.

It’s so simple that I it surprises me no school administrator or politician has thought of it before. And it’s a solution that won’t pit gun lovers and gun haters against one another.

Here’s what I’d suggest––treat every school in America as if they were in the hood.

When you visit a school in the hood, by five or six armed, no nonsense security guards are the greeters.

guards wearing bright yellow jackets and a scowl. Some patrol the outer perimeter of the school, and they are ready for combat at a moment’s notice.

You must pass through metal detectors and state your business before entering into the school. Students must flash their ID. Visitor have their driver’s licenses swiped.

The Detroit Public Schools have their own police force and send officers to schools where they suspect trouble to happen.

In the suburbs, an 80-year-old retired crossing guard with a pack of Skittles on his desk, who is afraid of the students, is the one who greets you and waves strangers in after a brief conversation. Often this poor bastard is the first to go in a school shooting. He often doesn’t know what hit him.

In the hood you expect and prepare trouble. In the burbs, you don’t think trouble will hit even if it does. And when it does it is so severe that it makes national headlines.

America has a problem and I’m here to rid us of school shootings that make us sad and make us mad. Often these tragedies are in Colorado, Connecticut, and California. Last week, this type of tragedy hit Michigan. A 15-year-old boy stalked Oxford High School and mowed down several students and a teacher, killing four children.

The shooting not only hit close to home for the Foster family. It hit home because my children worried about younger cousins who attend Oxford High School. There were uneasy moments until they found out that the people they loved were safe.

That wasn’t the case for the families of Hana St. Juliana, Madisyn Baldwin, Tate Myre, and Justin Shilling. They all lost their lives and their moms and dads will never be able to hug them again. They’d all be alive if administrators treated Oxford High School as if it were in the hood.

If Detroit can have its own school police force, why can’t Waterford, Walled Lake, Lake Orion and Oxford do the same?

This tragedy was potentially avoidable if school officials had paid closer attention to cries for help from the shooter.

A teacher at the school alerted a counselor of disturbing behavior by the shooter, Ethan Crumbly, on the day of the shooting. During a meeting with Crumbly’s parents, faculty recommended that they remove him from school. The parents resisted.

If we treated suburban schools like the hood, I am sure there would be protests and people screaming about their rights. But what’s more important? Your rights? Or keeping our children safe?

 Follow Foster on Twitter at TerryFosterDet.