I realize I'm coming late to this thing, but I wanted to throw my thoughts out there.

First, if you didn't watch Diane Sawyer's hatchet job on guns, it's available on ABC's website. I just watched it, and it did very bad things for my blood pressure.

There are many good write-ups about what happened, like this one at Found: One Troll and the VCDL rebuttal, so I'll spare you the play by play.

It seems to me that the students they armed for their simulation were set up to fail. It appears to me that all of the armed students sit in the same seat, which makes me think that they were put there - front and center. The "active shooter" who bursts into the classroom is the firearms instructor who trained them, which means he knows exactly who is a threat in the scenario. Simunitions have no ballistic effect - getting shot with them doesn't hinder your ability to fight. While we can't resolve the last point, a shooter who was not involved in the training would not know who might engage him. With sufficient training in tactics, an armed student would likely have chosen a better seat. From what I can see in the video, I would have been in the top row, closest to the door.

Even given "more training then most states require" to carry a firearm, when matched against an experienced shooter a new shooter will have little chance of success. Those of us that carry routinely practice, a lot. We practice drawing a firearm from concealment, because we know that yes, that cover garment can get in the way, and a fouled drawstroke is a failure. Those of us with a little more than average training learn to move and shoot. Those of us who carry make a point of being aware of our surroundings, so that we don't have to use our firearm.

I'm not surprised at how this report played out. I'm not even disappointed. It was the one sided, emotional garbage I would expect from ABC.