If you haven't seen it already, Michelle Malkin has a letter from a Virginia Tech student who survived:

It was just a regular day in class; the door was open and we heard a pop-pop-popping noise. Sounded like some kind of construction but it was getting disruptive so we went to close the door, and one of the girls stepped out in the hallway to see what it was. She saw the gun and ran back inside the room and slammed the door shut and we all got down on the floor.

We heard pretty much continuous shooting for the next minute or so, and I said, "Shouldn't we barricade the door," because we were sitting ducks with no way out inside that room if he opened the door. A couple more people floated the idea that "We need to barricade the door, NOW." But I was too scared to even move, much less move the teacher's desk.

Finally one of the guys in the front of the classroom was brave enough to get up and move the desk in front of the door to prevent outside entry. About twenty seconds later, the shooter rattled the doorknob trying to get in. When he couldn't get in he fired two shots through the door (single solid piece of wood) and left. We heard him go in to 206 (the room across the hall) and shoot the people in that room. If we hadn't put the barricade up when we did, I and all my classmates would be dead.

We're not training people to react to this correctly. Probably because we're not training them to react at all -- other than the dictum which says always do what the criminal asks. That may be effective in a mugging, but this wasn't a mugging.

There were, what, 12 to 30 people in that room? I don't mean to be gruesome, but arm 12 people with pens, tell them all to rush at and stab the eyes, face, and abdomen of an armed assailant and how far do you think he'll get? He'll probably take out a few of you -- but not all twelve. Too often, these guys die by their own hands, when there were literally hundreds of people around them who could have torn them apart or bludgeoned them unconscious.

I have no taste for violence. It just bothers me to think how many people die because our reflexes and/or societal training tell us that cowering beneath a desk is always an effective survival strategy.

Profiles of some of the dead are here; some of them died resisting.

Professor Liviu Librescu, 76, threw himself in front of the shooter when the man attempted to enter his classroom. The Israeli mechanics and engineering lecturer was shot to death, "but all the students lived - because of him," Virginia Tech student Asael Arad - also an Israeli - told Army Radio.

Several of Librescu's other students sent e-mails to his wife, Marlena, telling of how he had blocked the gunman's way and saved their lives, said Librescu's son, Joe.

God bless him.