mattmns said:
Wow that is crazy! Why did no one attempt to take down the gunman? I can't say exactly what I would do in the situation, since I was not in it, but I would probably try to take the guy down. Why not? If I die, well then I don't have to worry about school
and if I am successful then I am a hero
If you consider airplane evacuations as a somewhat similar event, the natural response is shock and disbelief that the event's actually happened. Most passengers typically remain seated until either the flight attendents give them guidance or other passengers start evacuating.
Even after a person starts moving, their thought process still jumps back and forth between irrelevant 'normal' options and more relevant response to the crisis at hand. In fact, about half of passengers try to take their carry-on baggage with them during real emergency evacuations.
Both situations are similar in that the people involved have had virtually no training. Airline passengers get the pre-flight safety briefing, but almost no one listens. Fortunately, people sitting in an exit row are more likely to listen to the safety briefing and read the safety card. Almost half of the people sitting in the exit row have at least some clue how the exit should open. Fewer know when to open the exit (in a couple cases a passenger opened or attempted to open an emergency exit when flames were present outside the exit - in one case, passengers actually evacuated through flames with several receiving severe burns).
I think you can virtually guarantee none of the students had ever received a briefing on what to do if a gunman suddenly entered the room and started firing. Recovering their senses quickly enough to jump out of a window is a pretty exceptional response in that situation. Enough students recovering their senses and coming up with a group plan is just unrealistic.
However, in emergency evacuations from planes, every once in a while a person does take some responsibility for themselves and the group and act quite heroically to help speed up the evacuation. You might get someone like that in a mad gunman scenario, but having even one person react that way would be pretty exceptional.
http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/2000/SS0001.pdf
Not particularly scientific, but a pretty riveting article by one of the survivors of Flight 1420 in Little Rock. Their plane slid off the runway and down an embankment and caught fire. Passengers evacuated the plane in total darkness (the emergency lighting didn't work) into a swampy field in the middle of a hail storm. Since they slid off the runway, controllers weren't expecting an emergency landing. It took 45 minutes for emergency personnel to respond.
AA Flight 1420
