School and law enforcement officials thought an Arkansas firearms trainer’s presentations were a benefit to the Cherokee community, where up to a third of its school staff have applied to carry firearms on school grounds.
Representatives from the sheriff’s department, police department, school board and district staff were impressed by the firearms trainer’s presentations on Friday and Saturday.
School Board President Jodi Thomas said Ed Monk’s three-hour presentation stirred an additional dozen staff members to volunteer for firearms training. Around 30 have submitted to the training, administered by Petersen Firearms Training of Okoboji.
“Albeit intense, it was very well-received by staff,” Thomas told the Cherokee Chronicle Times on Sunday. “It is very humbling to have my kids go to a school like Cherokee with that many staff members willing to undergo training and stop a threat if it should ever happen.”
Cherokee County Sheriff Derek Scott said Monk’s three-hour presentation was positive.
“I thought the staff meeting with Ed Monk was beneficial,” Scott said on Sunday. “Ed had a lot of knowledge he shared and I felt that I learned things that I did not know before.”
Monk acknowledges he skirts — if not crosses — the third rail of U.S. firearms politics. His teachings have been described as pro-gun and even extreme.
He delivered a presentation in Des Moines last month to the Iowa Firearms Coalition, a pro-Second Amendment lobbying group. His firearms training company, Last Resort Firearms Training of White Hall, Ark., last week shared a Facebook post that lampooned critics of policies that allowed firearms on school grounds.
“Most people do not want school staff members to carry guns inside a school on all the days that no killer attacks,” Last Resort’s post dated Jan. 11, 2023 reads. “But everyone will want some staff members to have a gun on the day the killer does attack. You can’t have both. Preferably the one that will save innocent lives.”
His ending quote to his lecture series is: “If you are threatened and scared, hide behind your front sight and press the problem away.”
Monk’s presentations have a point of view: Firearms should be available and carried by more civilians and off-duty cops in public places. He said law enforcement should invest more in firearms training and their administrators expect greater precision with sidearms. A massive body of evidence Monk has studied — from the mass shooting at Columbine High School to the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, Fla., — suggests more lives would be saved by following his recommendations.
“In my opinion, it looks pretty clear we’ve been failing horribly at responding to active shooters for about 40 years,” Monk said to open his presentation.
He believes more people should be armed in large areas of congregation instead of fewer. He said a 22-year-old with little to no training stopped a mass shooter at an Indianapolis mall last summer.
“As you may or may not well know, in Indiana a couple months ago, a 22-year-old concealed carry guy with little or no formal training of any type stopped an active shooter 15 seconds after he started,” said Monk, referring to a July Indianapolis Star story that reported Elisjsha Dicken intervening in a shooting at Greenwood Park Mall. Dicken was described as a hero, a good Samaritan and a “good guy with a gun,” per the Star.
Monk believes stopping the active shooter should receive supreme priority, even if it means violating existing oversight protocols like body camera activation or verbalizing with a suspect shooter before firing.
He also recommended firing at a suspected mass shooter in the back.
“I think that would be delightful,” Monk said of a circumstance involving a law enforcement officer shooting a suspect in the back.
Monk claims immediate firepower is essential to limit carnage.
He said an innocent person is shot every six to 10 seconds in a mass shooting. Under ideal circumstances, law enforcement is notified within five minutes of the gunman opening fire. Up to 50 people can be shot during that time.
The most effective way to limit the number of victims is an armed person on scene. There are other alternatives, like hardening the entrances to a school building or a military base, but those can easily be circumvented given the profile of a mass shooter. He said a school shooter in particular is likely to be a disaffected young male with a recent history inside the school building. A shooter can likely be a current student.
“Active shooters are likely young males. They attack in a gun-free zone, a place where it’s not legal for anybody to have a gun. So when they show up with their illegal gun, they have a monopoly on gunfire,” Monk said. “They’re the only ones who can shoot for a number of minutes until we can get somebody there with a gun to stop them. And that vacuum time … gives them enough time to get enough people shot to give them notoriety, the media attention and the fame they want.”
The ideal response to a mass shooter is a confrontation within the first 30 seconds of fire, preferably armed, Monk argued. He said unarmed intervenors have stopped mass shooters before, but his review of the evidence has shown those who are armed are more effective.
Researchers and policymakers have for some reason avoided addressing how to stop an active shooter in its immediacy, Monk claimed.
After the presentation, Monk blamed unresponsive administrators who are more likely to weigh expensive insurance premiums rather than policies that reduce victim counts. (Cherokee School District is the only district among its neighbors to allow non-law enforcement personnel to carry weapons on campus; the district has not yet heard from its insurance carrier about whether the district could continue coverage.) He also said emergency policies are much easier to execute from a school administrator or law enforcement chief’s perspective when fewer members of the public are armed.
“But I’m not doing my research on insurance premiums. They don’t save lives during an active shooter,” Monk argued. “My position is about reducing victim counts.”
Supt. Kim Lingenfelter declined to speculate on how the Cherokee School Board would proceed with Monk’s recommendations. Not every board member attended the presentations Monk offered. And of those who did, they could glean a number of recommendations.
Thomas, the board’s president, said the district would consider staff appointments for weapons training at a future meeting. Other district policies “will be used in the future as we continue to develop safety policies and procedures at our schools.”
“From the dozen staff that have contacted me since the training, they all appreciated how Ed was able to break down the data in a logical, numbers-and-math-driven manner,” Thomas said of Monk’s presentation, of which 90 community members attended.
Sheriff Scott said his office has already implemented some of Monk’s recommendations. Cherokee Police Chief Nate James did not respond to questions about Monk’s presentation.
Deputies will be authorized to shoot an active shooter in the back. They won’t be required to verbalize the threat, either.
“Protecting our children and citizens is a priority and I will stand behind the deputy’s decision in disarming a threat by these means,” Scott said after the presentation.
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