AP photo by Stuart Villanueva/The Galveston County Daily News

By EDER CAMPUZANO

The Oregonian/OregonLive

Maybe the U.S. would see fewer school shootings if the buildings didn't have so many darn doors.

That was Twitter's takeaway from remarks Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick made during a press conference Friday in the wake of a shooting that left at least eight dead and several more injured at a high school in Santa Fe.

"We may have to look at the design of our schools moving forward and retrofitting schools that are already built," he said, "and what I mean by that is there are too many entrances and too many exits to our over 8,000 campuses in Texas ... there aren't enough people to put a guard at every entrance and exit. You would be talking 25-, 30-, 40,000 people."

Patrick went on to cite courthouses and office buildings as examples of places with one or two secure entrances schools could model these new designs after.

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"Schools may have to have ... not all students show up at once so that we don't have every student -- there are 1,400 students here -- trying to get in the door at once. We're going to have to be creative. We're going to have to think outside the box," he said, before conceding it "may take a lot of work and a lot of money."

Doors, the internet sarcastically agreed, may indeed be the culprits here, after all. Soon, #DoorControlNow began spreading on Twitter.

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Look at these assault-style doors used in the Santa Fe shooting. Nobody NEEDS an assault door. #DoorControlNow pic.twitter.com/oWUfiVvvkY — racist bone not-haver (@GuyBeinDude) May 18, 2018

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Ahh yes. Doors. Doors are definitely to blame here. Damn those doors for shooting those students. These doors have gone unregulated too long! #DoorControlNow https://t.co/rc0VzvRrnz — Jessica Scott (@JS_Scott) May 18, 2018

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Join the intrepid Lt. Governor of the Great State of Texas, @DanPatrick and call for #DoorControlNow. There are too many unregulated doors in our schools causing too many shootings. — John D. Burns (@johnburnsnc) May 18, 2018

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Omfg they're going to ban doors before they ban assault rifles https://t.co/v0A6QLfGfW — Lauren Duca (@laurenduca) May 18, 2018

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Y’all rolling your eyes but i can tell you as an insider that the media is in the pocket of Big Door https://t.co/CHn0EBS9QM — Lando Callipygian. (@GeeDee215) May 18, 2018

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Of course, some pointed out that designing schools with fewer doors would open the buildings to another hazard altogether.

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the triangle shirtwaist factory had the right idea! https://t.co/yfxDTqowdF — Erin 🛏🐞Ryan (@morninggloria) May 18, 2018

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Fewer doors, definitely. Let’s do that right after we ban fires. — Jennifer Bakos (@jenbakos) May 18, 2018

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Ultimately, what Patrick was angling at was that he believed staffing the entrances and exits to the state's schools with armed guards would be one way to mitigate the campus shootings that have dominated headlines in recent years.

And if there were fewer doors -- or, in his words, "entrances and exits" -- to those facilities, it would be easier -- and cheaper -- to explore that possibility.

--Eder Campuzano

@edercampuzano

503.221.4344