These cowardly bastages look for targets where victims will be least likely to be armed or try to mount a counterattack.
I don't know. Mateen had been to the club several times and knew the club had armed security (off duty cop).
Best course of action is to bum-rush the attacker with as many others as are willing, and overwhelm the attacker.
It is, but you have to be smart about it. Multiple people tried this at Luby's, Fort Hood, VT and all ended up shot and many ended up dead. It certainly did work against Loughner, Seattle Pacific University (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nS9Qb2kNaw0), and various other school shootings, sometimes by people already wounded.
More than one eyewitness account said that at first they thought the gunfire was part of the music. We're talking about a dark environment with very loud music and flashing lights. It's disorienting to begin with. I think a lot of them didn't even know what was happening until it was too late.
This is a common theme among interviewed survivors/witnesses at many such events. In this case, people thought it was part of the music or goings-on of the club. Some realized it was unusual, but thought it was a prank (common misperception). People often say that they thought the shots were fireworks. In the process of realizing what is going on, many on seeing a person or persons with guns, many still have thoughts that the situation is a prank, can't be happening, etc. These people often lose critical seconds of time. You can see such reactions in many security videos of events with bad guys. Even many trained professionals lose critical seconds of needed reaction, not because they can't react faster, but because they haven't processed the information going into their brains sufficiently to to react.
The hero of the Pennsylvania mall shooting back '85 walked up and disarmed Seegrist after seeing her shoot people. He thought the whole event was a staged pre-Halloween prank. He quickly go fed up with the distasteful joke and walked up to Seegrist and grabbed her gun and grabbed her as well putting an end to the joke. He saved a lot of people from harm, thinking he was saving them from a distasteful prank.
Last night I learned that over 60 lives were actually saved by a fine young man who succeeded in opening one of those doors, see
http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/stor...ting/85860320/
This guy did good, no doubt about it. He was the paid bouncer who worked at the club who knew the layout of the building. He opened a door nobody else was opening and he and 60+ others ran from the club.