Read the Book's Forward
Forward
The atrocity at the Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado in 1999 became ground zero for a “trend crime,” mass murders in schools. It dominated the media for a very long time. The two perpetrators wound up on the covers of Time and Newsweek. Anti-social people created websites actually celebrating the sick mass murder. Remember the song with the lines “Wanna see my smiling face on the cover of the Rolling Stone”? The magazine Rolling Stone actually put Tsarnev, the Boston Marathon bomber, on its cover.
And a generation of thwarted losers learned that if they wanted fame, the world’s attention, all they had to do was get their hands on some deadly weapons and murder as many helpless kids as they could.
Columbine taught American police that the old standard policy of “set up a perimeter and wait for SWAT” didn’t work. They faced two enemies: the mad dog killer, and the clock. The unforgiving time/space continuum left too long a lag before the Special Weapons and Tactics team could assemble, travel to the scene, and make entry.
Ron Borsch, lead instructor at the SEALE (SouthEast Area Law Enforcement) Academy was the first voice in the wilderness who said the policy had to change, and even the first responding officer running solo should “ride to the sound of the guns” and neutralize the threat. Critics decried him as a madman, but subsequent such events proved him right. Yet that was only one part of the problem solved, because the lone officer still had to make his or her way to the scene while the clock was inexorably ticking, and even an SRO (School Resource Officer) on a large campus still took time to get to the actual shooting scene. Some of us recommended the Israeli model that arose and proved successful after the Ma’alot Massacre: armed, trained school personnel seeded throughout the campus, at least one of whom was reasonably likely to be right there at ground zero as soon as the gunfire erupted.
Enter the author of the book you are now hopefully absorbing: Ed Monk, whose distinguished careers in both military and domestic law enforcement combined with his analytical mind and dynamic voice to make him the leading authority he is today on stopping mass murders.
As a trainer of police since 1972 and of law-abiding armed citizens since 1981, I have attended many seminars on this topic. No instructor on this topic has been more thorough, more authoritative, nor more practical than Ed Monk...nor more correct.
The proof is in the history. When a competent armed protector is present at the time and place where the would-be mass-murderer starts shooting, the casualty count among the innocent is greatly reduced. It is true at schools, at houses of worship, at crowded public places. The proverbial Good Guys and Gals With Guns simply happen to be right there, right now when the psychopathic killer begins pulling triggers or swinging knives, and are thus capable of stopping the carnage sooner.
The time/space continuum. Logic. Common sense, which must override political correctness and political identity if lives are to be saved.
The use of lawful, countervailing deadly force to stop murderous violence is akin to the medical principle of toxin-anti-toxin treatment, poison against poison. The side effects of radiation, chemotherapy, or even prophylactic amputation are ugly to contemplate, but the greater danger of terminal cancer is worth the treatment. A teacher will find it repugnant to shoot a seventeen-year-old trying to murder their young students, but allowing it to happen is far worse.
Recent research by Professor John Lott proves Ed Monk to be right: more mass murders are stopped by armed citizens than by responding police. In case after case, the slaughter of the innocent stops as soon as an armed protector takes action. The mass murderer surrenders at the sight of the first armed protector (the Aurora, Colorado theater shooting), or kills himself (the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre), or dies from the protector’s gunfire (the White Settlement Church incident).
What many critics of the concept miss is the deterrent effect. When the FASTER program (Faculty And Staff Training for Emergency Response) in Ohio caught on in teaching school personnel to protect their kids, it was widely publicized. At this writing, there have been no mass school shootings in Ohio. In the community where I live, the Sheriff’s Department trained the armed school faculty and the superintendent of schools flatly announced, “If you come to our schools with a weapon to harm our children, we will kill you.” As in Ohio there have been no such attempts.
The sick, thwarted losers who seek fame for murder are sometimes ready to kill themselves or die in what they think is a perverted “blaze of glory shooting it out with SWAT,” but none of them fantasize about dying after their first shot when Miss Grundy the History Teacher shoots them in the back of the head.
Congratulate yourself for buying Ed Monk’s book. Absorb it. You may be the person who quotes from it at a school board meeting that results in adoption of a voluntary armed faculty program. You may even be the person who stops such an atrocity yourself.
Ed Monk’s teaching has already saved lives. Absorb and share his teaching, and join in that righteous process of protecting innocent lives in the future.
​
-- Massad Ayoob, April 2025