I wanted to share this just to contrast the response.

In one situation, you had a trained, heavily armed and determined individual in a hard to reach location with pretty open fields of fire to reach him. Two cops and a random guy that worked in a bookstore successfully assaulted the position using a pistol a shotgun and a borrowed rifle.

In another case, you had an untrained heavily armed person behind a door actively shooting children. You have probably 100 - 150 police on the other side of the door and a large portion of them have full gear including helmets, rifles and body armor that took no offensive action. This went on for an hour

Texas University Shooting

Officer Houston McCoy, 26, heard of the shooting on his radio. As he looked for a way into the tower, a student offered to help, saying he had a rifle at home. McCoy drove the student to his home to retrieve the rifle.

Allen Crum, a 40-year-old retired Air Force tail gunner, was a manager at the University Book Store Co-Op. Across the street he saw a 17-year-old newspaper boy being dragged and went to break up what he thought was a fight. Learning the boy had been shot, and hearing more shots, Crum rerouted street traffic out of harm's way. Unable to make his way back to the store safely, he then made his way to the tower, where he offered to help the police. Inside the tower, he accompanied Department of Public Safety Agent Dub Cowan and Austin Police Officer Jerry Day up the elevator; Cowan provided Crum with a rifle.

Around noon, Officer Ramiro "Ray" Martinez was off duty at home when he heard about the attack on the news. Having called the police station, he was instructed to go to the campus and direct traffic. Once there, he found other officers already doing that, so he went to the tower. He assumed he would find a team of officers there, but when he reached the 27th floor, he found only Cowan, Crum, and Day.

Whitman dead on the observation deck
Officers attempting to reach the tower were forced to move slowly and take cover often, but a small group of officers including Houston McCoy began making their way to the tower via underground maintenance tunnels. Officers and several civilians provided suppressive fire from the ground with small weapons and hunting rifles, forcing Whitman to stay low and fire through storm drains at the foot of the observation deck's wall. A police sharpshooter in a small plane was driven back by Whitman's return fire but continued to circle at a distance, seeking to distract Whitman and further limit his freedom to choose targets.

Martinez, Crum, and Day searched the 27th floor, where they found M. J. Gabour; Day removed him. As they started up to the stairs to the observation deck, Crum asked "Are we playing for keeps?", Martinez responded, "You're damn right we're playing for keeps", to which Crum replied, "Well you better deputize me".

Beneath the stairwell leading to the reception area, Martinez found Marguerite Lamport, Mark Gabour, Mary Gabour, and Mike Gabour. Mike Gabour gestured to the observation deck, saying: "He's out there".

Martinez reached the observation deck first. He told Crum to remain at the door. McCoy and Day reached the observation deck a few minutes later. At some point, Crum accidentally fired his rifle.

Around 1:24 pm, while Whitman was looking south for the source of the rifle shot, Martinez and McCoy rounded the northeastern corner of the observation deck. Martinez jumped out and fired in the direction of Whitman, missing with all of his revolver shots. McCoy leaped out while Martinez was firing and saw Whitman's head looking over the light ballast, McCoy fired at the top of the ballast, hitting Whitman between the eyes with several pellets, killing Whitman instantly. McCoy fired again, hitting Whitman on his left side. Martinez grabbed McCoy's shotgun, ran to Whitman's prone body, and fired a direct shotgun blast into the deceased Whitman's left arm.