Washington Wednesday - Aiming for a compromise

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 8th of June, 2022.

So glad you’ve joined us today on The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

First up: straight talk about guns.

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are debating various measures aimed at curbing mass shootings and gun violence. In the House, Democrats may soon pass a bill largely down party lines that Republicans say won’t actually fix the problem.

Meantime, in the Senate a small group of Democrats and Republicans are holding bipartisan talks trying to find common ground.

REICHARD: But today, rather than talking to a pundit or a public policy analyst, we thought we’d talk to a different kind of expert--someone who understands guns about as well as anyone in the country.

His name is Brandon Webb. He’s is a former combat-decorated Navy SEAL sniper, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a U.S. Navy Chief, he was head instructor at the Navy SEAL sniper school.

He is also the author of multiple bestselling books drawing on his experiences including Cold Fear out this week. Brandon, good morning!

WEBB: Good morning. Thanks for having me.

REICHARD: Thank you. Well, you know that emotions run high on both sides of the arguments, we do have a Constitution through which gun measures must be run. But for our personal purposes here, I want to ask you about some of the measures, both sides are suggesting - no need to take a side or recommend a policy or talk about the legalities—just as a weapons expert, whether these measures might be effective. So one idea is to allow willing teachers to carry concealed handguns. And just thinking about the Uvalde shooting, for example, would that have made a difference if the teachers had been armed?

WEBB: So I just wrote an article about being being able to realistically practice defensive shooting and most people, even the police departments, they don't have to enough training and due to no fault of their own. It's just a lot of these departments are under understaffed. They don't have the budget to really train to the level to use a firearm effectively.

I think it takes years of practice and training to really get to a level where you can use a firearm effectively in an offensive or defensive situation. So putting handguns in the classroom? Uh, yeah, it may seem like a good idea, just like a lot of my friends in New York Cities, say to me, oh, I want to get a gun. And I said, Look, you can get a gun, but you're gonna have to put a few years into training yourself, to be able to really think that you're going to be able to effectively use this in a in a defensive situation, because I can tell you this, depending on especially in a crowded city like New York, you have an issue of bullet path where you shoot, you could hit the bad guy, but that bullet keeps on going. So where's it going? We saw a shooting in Times Square where officers shot a threatening man, and the bullets hit tourists, because the bullets keep on going. So that's an issue called bullet path.

Then you deal with just the stressful situation of drawing a weapon in a high stress situation against an active shooter, referencing the Uvalde shooting, I think it's very unlikely an arm teacher would be trained enough to deal with that situation. That's just the reality of it. In the SEAL teams, we trained for three, four years, we go through extensive training. And we have a drill called a hooded box drill where you stand fully kitted on a wrestling mat, and a hood goes down around your head, the hood goes up and you're thrown into a crazy scenario, maybe there's a guy holding a woman hostage, another guy running at you with a knife and then a guy pointing a gun at you and you have to deal with that situation. Then they reset you, you deal with another situation. And so that gives you an idea of the level of intensity and stress that professional shooters are under to be able to react in a stressful situation like Uvalde. But to make a long story longer. I don't think putting guns in the classroom is solving the problem. The big issue I see with what's happening with these mass shootings is it's a mental health issue. You have to look at the underlying issues like what's driving these shooting scenarios. Most of it is mental health issues. So how do you keep the guns out of the hands of the mentally ill and put more onus on the firearms owners that a lot of times these mentally ill people can easily get access to a friend or relative’s firearms? Like there should be severe penalties for for people not being good custodians of the firearms they own.

REICHARD: Another measure that is often brought up is banning so-called assault weapons. Would that make any difference in your view?

WEBB: Well, here's the thing. In reality, I can take a hunting rifle with a high capacity magazine that maybe doesn't look like a military style rifle, but it holds the same amount of bullets. It fires just as fast as the assault style rifle. But it's just packaged up as a hunting rifle. So it really is the same exact thing. So I think there's a lot of frustration on the gun owners side when, you know, people on the on the opposite side of the argument, they don't really have an understanding of what they're talking about. And that just makes, you know, when it's content, you know, it's a very heated issue. And I think when both sides are arguing, and the opposition doesn't really know what they're talking about, it just further frustrates and kind of in flames the issue on the on the gun owner side.

REICHARD: Another proposal often talked about is banning high-capacity magazines. You have said that you don't think that would make a difference. Why not?

WEBB: Because you look at the magazine capacity issue. And states like California, say you have to have an eight round - and I don't know the the laws of California what they are today - but let's just say they outlawed any magazine capacity over 10 rounds, I think that's actually the law. So you can't have a 30 round 30 bullets in a magazine, but you can have 10. So a shooter will just go buy more magazines and load them up and have them pre-loaded in a backpack. And so it really doesn't solve the issue. On the magazine capacity. It just it shows up to the gun owner side is this silly law that gets passed that punishes the responsible firearms owners. And it really doesn't make sense. And when you look at how do we stop, you know, what's the fundamental core issue of behind these mass shootings? And typically, it's a mental health issue.

REICHARD: Brandon, you have criticized some of the proposals from the gun control lobby but have also said that you feel gun owners should be more open to real conversations about how to solve these issues. Expound on that if you would.

WEBB: Yeah, there's always this argument, “well, it's my constitutional right to own firearms.” Well, I'm not advocating taking away the Second Amendment rights, I'm just saying there should be some flexibility on the issue, in an effort to keep the guns out of the hands of the mentally ill, and background checks don't don't just because you can pass a background check doesn't solve this, this issue of mentally ill people being able to get their hands on firearms. So it's a very complex issue. My whole point was that we need to have a dialogue, we can't just sit across and not make any compromises. And this goes for a lot of the other problems we face in this country, as well, we need to have, we need to get to a point where we can have an intelligent conversation and debate … I think — let me take a step back. I was a Speech and Debate judge for my son and daughter when they're in Speech and Debate competitions in high school. And the one thing I really enjoyed about judging these competitions was the effort that both teams took to understand the other person's position. It requires a lot of listening, putting yourself in the other person's shoes, and then truly understanding where this person is coming from to get to a point of conclusion where there's some compromise on the issue. That's what I think we need to do in this country and it's sad that I can go to a high school debate competition and see much better behavior and intelligent conversations and debate around these heated topics in this country than the adults running the country. So, you know, we just need to have a discourse. And it's not just the firearms issue. We have big problems. We need to compromise. And we need to hear each other out and get that back in this country. It's desperately needed.

REICHARD: Brandon Webb is an author and former Navy SEAL sniper. His new book, Cold Fear, is out now. Just released yesterday. Brandon, thanks so much.

WEBB: Thank you.

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