Mass murder has, sickeningly, become a trend crime. When such an incident takes place, the perpetrator’s name and face are on TV and in newspapers for days. The sick little bastards who carried out the Columbine slaughter in 1999 wound up on the covers of Time and Newsweek. Remember the old song that went, “Wanna see my smiling face on the cover of the Rolling Stone”? Rolling Stone put Tsarnev, the Boston Marathon bomber, on its cover.
As a result, every thwarted late-filled loser began to fantasize about doing the same thing. Look how many of their sick manifestos and last Facebook comments are something like “The world will remember my name.” And “gun control” won’t do a damn thing to stop it.
What will? An armed first responder, by which I mean someone right there where the deadly danger breaks out who is prepared and equipped to stop it.
One of the most important books of 2025 in my opinion is “First 30 Seconds” by Ed Monk, whose military and police experience and intensive research have made him probably the leading authority on how to shortstop mass murders. The enemy is not just the murderer, it’s also the unforgiving clock. Monk’s title comes from his proven theory that to reduce the death toll, the killer must be stopped within 30 seconds of firing his first shot.
That requires someone there who can stop it. SROs, School Resource Officers. School faculty members trained and armed with concealed handguns. Even an armed citizen in the right place at the right time.
We all remember the horror of the Uvalde atrocity. What few remember is that within hours of that terrible mass murder, another psycho opened fire on a crowd with an AR15 in an Eastern state…but before any of his bullets could touch one of his intended victims, a woman with a concealed carry permit drew her gun and shot him dead.
You can order “First 30 Seconds” here.
It may be the most important book of 2025, and will most certainly be so for the as yet unknown intended victims who will be saved by someone who read it and acted upon it responsibly.