I think, however, had one student made some effort to stop what was happening, or even started giving instructions, others would have followed.

I remember one class I took in college, where the seats were so closely packed that even getting out of the desks in the front row required the cooperation of ones neighbors.

In press of panicking and falling bodies, it may be that those who wished to rush the gunman might have been hopelessly mired in place.

I, too, am disturbed by the stories of “playing possum” that are coming out, but still — without some organization amongst their numbers (which perhaps they had not time for) I don’t know what would have been reasonable to expect from them.

One individual at a time, coming at Cho head on would have simply been “picked off” before he could have fully come to his feet.

Suffice it to say it was an unimaginable terror.

Yes, it is very difficult to try and second guess the thoughts going through the students when Cho was shooting everyone in a classroom multiple times each. Yet it shouldn’t take very long for the brain to process the information that everyone in the classroom was being shot multiple times each.

Those people at Virginia Tech couldn’t know how many or few gunmen there were. They couldn’t have known if it was a targeted killing or an ambush. They just didn’t know what, where, why or who was in danger.

Should the deaths of the hero-professors (and there was more than one) have been in vain by the impulsive, blind movement of the very students they were trying to save?

Combat readiness through military training would surely benefit our civilian ranks, but who is willing to mandate that of our young men?