Bill's Notes

The late Asa Baber once wrote that courage is more of a fluid concept than most like to think ... and I agree to an extent. Most men, I think, know that they may react in different ways to the same circumstances. That some days they'd have the courage, and others they might not. I also believe that there are some men who would rise to the occasion every time. They have a level of discipline that overcomes failures of courage.

This is all to say -- there are commenters out there judging the reactions of civilians to the Va Tech violence. I don't have a lot of use for that. At 9 o'clock on Monday morning, in the middle of engineering class, you're not exactly mentally prepared for combat. Especially when you're unarmed and a perpetrator is armed. Things are happening too quickly and you have practically no information (is there one shooter or many? how serious is this threat? what is the problem here?) and very little time to process what little you do.

If you even had a gun pointed at you, you know you're powerless to prevent someone from pulling the trigger and killing you. Yes, if a group of you rush the attacker, possibly you could get the attacker, but you don't have a lot of time to go from "mechanics of solid" to "let's team up and rush this guy because some of us may live."

YMMV.