Christian Schneider at WPRI is debunking some of the claims that a budget increase is required at the UW Schools to prevent a Virginia Tech style incident from occurring there.  Their claim is that:

After Virginia Tech, we all were astonished, grieving, upset, and wondered if the campuses at the University of Wisconsin, all the college campuses, whether private or public, would be safe.

We had the UW System President Kevin Reilly, who after the shootings at Virginia Tech, covened a school safety task force, and they came up with their recommendations, and he said today that there is no way they can implement the recommendations to make the campuses safe because of the significant cuts to the University of Wisconsin...

To which Schneider responds:

Let me be up front – as a Virginia Tech alum, I am probably oversensitive to people using the tragedy to further their own causes. But to say that somehow a violent act like we saw at Tech could be averted if taxpayers just gave the UW more money is insulting.

The fact that the UW reviewed their security policies in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings is actually commendable. Certainly, if there could be something they could do differently to make campuses safer, it would be worth investigating. But a review of their final report (a report ignored by noted campus safety expert Judy Robson until it became politically advantageous) shows that most of their recommendations are policy changes, not fiscal ones. Furthermore, it is unclear how any of these changes could stop a random shooter that has their mind set on mass murder. One of the areas they emphasize is hiring more mental health counselors, but it is unclear as to whether this would actually stop someone with no known mental health problems.

I'd agree with this, and raise you one.  These are the sorts of debates that go on every time one of these incidents occur.  In fact, they are exactly the type of rare, but highly visible, incidents that are used by police to convince communities to create more SWAT teams.  Most famously, the North Hollywood bank robbery has been used over and over again as an example of the need for SWAT teams.  The Columbine Shooting is also used quite often as a reason, despite the fact that the SWAT team did mobilize, but mostly stayed outside the school.  Even the small city of West Bend has a SWAT team which was called into action yesterday:

SWAT team officers from the Washington County Sheriff's Department and the West Bend Police Department entered a home in Jackson early today after spending the night negotiating with an armed 57-year-old woman who was threatening to harm herself.
...
The woman had told a friend that she had planned to harm herself, and the friend called Jackson police.

SWAT officers recovered a loaded pistol.

A woman was threatening suicide, so the police thought the best option was to send in heavily armed police with assault rifles.  To do what exactly?  Shoot her before she could shoot herself?  Thankfully it ended well.  But the fact is that militarization of our police force is now so pervasive, that ammunition companies which supply bullets to police are not able to keep up with the supply.  This has been misreported as being caused by the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The actual reason is that the police are just shooting things a lot more, mostly during training:

Today, it is this increased and on-going militarization of police forces and the associated training requirements that have caused the ammunition shortages experienced by some police departments, and the lack of ammunition is not related to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in any meaningful way.

The Associated Press report is not supported beyond anecdotal evidence by real, objective facts.

ATK's Ammunition Systems Group is the largest ammunition manufacturing body in the world. ATK runs the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant under contract, where it has the capacity to manufacture 1.5 billion rounds of ammunition a year, or put another way, a half billion rounds per year more than is being used by our military in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It is also a major supplier of law enforcement ammunition under Federal Premium, Speer Gold Dot, Lawman, and CCI Blazer brands. The law enforcement ammunition is made in plants in Idaho and Minnesota that are completely separate for their military operations at Lake City. These production lines do not, as the AP falsely states, use the same equipment used to manufacture military ammunition.

So exactly what does the UW System need more money for, which could possibly prevent a VT style shooting from occurring?  Are they proposing that every UW school have it's own SWAT team at the ready to fly into action?  Because nothing short of that would do any good... and even that is highly questionable.  The reality is that they types of incidents are just as rare as they are horrific and tragic.  The best prevention is individuals keeping an eye on the behavior of their friends and family, and watching for warning signs, so that they can help them before it's too late.  No amount of money can make that happen.  It's up to people.