The things to do are to run away, if possible, to barricade yourself behind a door, if possible, to hide behind something, if running and barricading are not possible, and to play dead, if all other choices are closed.

Fighting back is utterly impossible for 6 year olds.

If it had been teens, then perhaps fighting might have been feasible. Again, assuming running away or barricading a room were not options.

You’d need odds of 20 to 1 or so to stand any real chance, and you’d need students who had played on a team and developed a degree of cooperation.

I don’t see calling fighting back “suicide”. If you can’t run and you can’t hide, fighting back is at worst no different than simply waiting your turn to get shot.

Second guessing the conduct of the people who were there is so unfair. They did everything right. The principle tried her luck at brazening it out and brusquely ordering the gunman out. Who knows? It might have worked. The captain went down with the ship. Good try though.

The teachers barricaded their positions, many of them. That did work.

Others who didn’t have that possibility did the next best thing, and shielded their students with their own bodies. That got them killed, but it saved the lives of some of the students.

The first responders girded their loins and went in without waiting around for backup or perfect information. That might have got them killed, but as things worked out, the gunner lost his nerve and killed himself rather than face somebody else who also had a gun.

Far from laying blame, we should be giving credit. Compared to what might have happened, and given what the people on the scene had to work with, the actual result is comparable to the incredible emergency landing at Sioux City, Iowa long ago. Many of the passengers and crew died, and that was bad, but given the circumstances of engines out and control surfaces gone, that was a huge achievement. In simulations after the event, no crew has ever managed even a crash landing. The crew did better than possible, in other words.