If we’re going to prevent large-scale tragedies like the one at Virginia Tech, we need better gun control and mental health services – not text-message alerts and concealed firearms.

The case of shooter Seung-Hui Cho bears this out: Cho, who was once declared “an imminent danger to himself or others,” might still be alive if he’d actually received court-ordered mental health treatment in 2005. Alternatively, his well-documented psychiatric problems should have barred him from owning a gun.

Virginia Tech administrators could have responded much more aggressively to Cho’s increasingly unstable behavior, which included threats against professors and classmates and three reported incidents of stalking.

But no one took advantage of those opportunities, and now 33 people are dead.

That’s why I was glad to hear my college, Duke University, was upgrading its emergency management protocols last summer, launching a new Web site for urgent communications and mailing “in case of emergency” packets to all students. Unfortunately, none of those preparations addresses a deeper, more expensive problem: The need for quality psychiatric care on campus.

Like many (dare I say most?) universities, Duke’s mental health services are overburdened and underperforming. Our Counseling and Psychological Services staff is not equipped to provide ongoing mental health treatment, and even the sickest students must wait two to three weeks for a one-time consultation.

Although these programs are unglamorous money pits, they’re also our best chance of stopping madmen like Cho.

Indeed, swat teams and e-mail alerts are poor investments by comparison: Northern Illinois University shooter Steven Kazmierczak managed to kill five students in the two minutes it took officers to arrive at the scene this February.

In other words, no campus is secure without adequate mental health services, which prevent these tragedies before they happen. Other efforts may make us feel safe, but stand the best chance of actually being safe.