In the United States, arming teachers is our best bet at the time. Once the initial panic is gone, as I said previously, people could shoot better. But as so much as there is a risk of a shooting, people will still die because reaction time simply is not good enough in comparison to someone who's mind is set on killing as many people as possible. If we were a country like Japan which never had a massively armed population in the first place, then no guns would be a good idea. But with how the US has turned out, unfortunately we need them.
I think I may be getting the terminology wrong, but I still don't see why having to reload less wouldn't give you an advantage in certain situations. You are virtually defenseless for those five seconds, right? Wouldn't you want to spend less time like that?
And guns are simply the most effective means of killing to date. It's both short and long distance, the projectiles travel virtually instantaneously, you can fire a lot, you are mobile, and it only takes one bullet to kill someone. Knives, Karate, and swords still kill yes, but they just aren't nearly as powerful as guns, which is thus far the ideal weapon of choice in conflict today. Granted it can be used for recreation, but the purpose and great possibility is still there, and *if we could* remove all guns, banning them completely would at least help lower the number of deaths in a certain case of Flash Mob. But we can't at the moment, so making the population more armed and more trained is our best bet.