“...and not that is not armchair bravado.”
I don’t believe it is. You are a culture relic.
Every man who lived on the street where I grew up, (especially if he had a sidearm on his hip) would have gone into that building under those circumstances that day. They would not have swaggered in, shoulders swinging and eyes slitted with grim purpose, rather, they would have turned pale, their eyes would have bugged, they would have utterd “Jesus Christ”-—and then done what they had been raised to do and what the culture expected of them.
“Culture” is all. It really is.