Mumbai photographer: I wish I'd had a gun, not a camera. Armed police would not fire back - World news, News - Belfasttelegraph.co.uk: "But what angered Mr D'Souza almost as much were the masses of armed police hiding in the area who simply refused to shoot back. 'There were armed policemen hiding all around the station but none of them did anything,' he said. 'At one point, I ran up to them and told them to use their weapons. I said, 'Shoot them, they're sitting ducks!' but they just didn't shoot back.'"
------------------
Police are hardly ever much use at the time a crime is happening. Most of the time (unlike in Mumbai), they are not around until after it is all over, so all you can reasonably expect from them is a good investigation. In Mumbai it seems that the police were slow to respond. Maybe they were shocked into passivity. The government eventually brought in the special forces types who did all anybody could expect, to the point where many of them lost their lives.

I agree with all the analysts who say we can expect this type of attack to be repeated, and there is no reason to think it couldn't happen in the US. How hard is it for a terrorist organization to arm ten people with illegal military weapons and send them into a shopping mall, hotel, restaurant, or train station? There are too many soft targets to protect. There is no way to place armed guards in all these places, let alone expect any better than what happened the Mumbai train station.

The only way to have an immediate response in these situations is to have a significant percentage of civilians licensed to carry concealed firearms. Many people blanch at that prospect, but there is no other way, short of turning the nation into a police state. D'Souza said it himself: "I only wish I had a gun rather than a camera."