But in this situation it was an unarmed room of young people and women, and the perp was a guy with a shotgun and a semi-auto handgun. The only thing that you would accomplish by trying to attack him would be forcing him to shoot.
Also, it may be one thing to make that decision to defend yourself, but in this situation, an attempt to defend could result in the guy shooting others.
OTOH, it could result in only 1 person getting killed - the hero.
We will never know in such situations. We will never know what choice is best. So such arguments really are moot.
Well, that's why I said that hindsight is 20/20. But these days, I think people should assume the worst will happen no matter what and be trained in advance on how best to protect themselves. These poor people probably had no clue.
And with no way to call for help, attacking beforehand would have likely led to more deaths, including the boys, teachers, and infants, as well as the girls.
We all want to think when we hear about things like this that somehow it could been prevented. The idea that a person who is determined to murder innocents and does not fear death can attack successfully is quite chilling. But from what has been released so far it doesn't appear that anyone could have stop this slaughter except the killer himself.