Wide eyed Screaming Short breath Shaking hands Pulls Fluorescent green Lever on the Wall nearby. Sticky white foam Explodes out From pipes Hanging bolted Beneath the Fire suppression Sprinkler system Lines. Coughing Banging into furniture Scrambling away Blood trickling by Fresh, jagged, Bullet holes On the wall. Now he struggles To reload. The thick foamy Foggy haze Clings to him Hard to pull His hands away From the magazine. Coughing. Footsteps Heavier on the Sticky ground Harder to see down The goo speckled Optics. Greasy wavy hair Plastered to his Face. Black clad officers Fly down the hallway. He clicks the Trigger Awkwardly, Laboriously pulling his finger Away, sticky release, Trying to pull again, Missing, Bullets falling, Into the tiled floor, And cement walls, As he is smashed apart Splattered red scrambled egg yolks Blown out of him by police Assault rifles. Metro crime scene Cleanup contractors Pressure wash And mop their Way through the Building Reloading their Canisters with Green soapy fluid Quickly hand drying Behind them To avoid Water Damage. Federal officials reviewing proposal For mandatory installation of the system Sternly click through graphs. Red lines show normal killing rate Per unit of time the shooter is active. Blue lines parallel beneath the red, Show the encumbrance system adjusted killing rate. The gap, Statistically, Are the lives saved.
**The point here is, in addition to preventative tactics like better policing, gun control, and access to mental health services, why are we not considering methods to help mitigate damage onsite?
I’m not trying to put this out as an actually correct solution, though I guess it might be. It’s just a starting point.
The hypothetical tool is trying to stop activity quickly. So how do you do that? Is it something earsplitting? Is it foam? Is is tear gas?
This story focuses on foam delivered like the fire suppression chemicals that come out of the pipes you see in public buildings:

The story is supposed to be disturbing, because installing a system like this is acknowledging the possibility of this occurring much more directly than gun control or mental health initiatives do. Any time you look up and see the pipes, you remember that it is a possibility.
The question this is supposed to leave you with is, why would we let squeamishness prevent us from preventing deaths?