CLAY: We are joined now by Jack Carr. And Jack has not been able to hear the press conference which just happened — and we played it in hour one and we’ve been reacting to it — but Jack is a former Navy SEAL sniper, New York Times best-selling author of In the Blood, and, Jack, I appreciate you joining us here, and I’m just gonna kind of give you a little bit of the background. I’ve been writing down the timeline. Obviously, you as a Navy SEAL, have been trained in a lot of very difficult hostage and active shooter-type situations over your time.

So what happened is, the suspect… I mean, “suspect” is probably being kind to him at this point. The killer enters the school at 11:33. Police enter within two minutes and exchange fire. This guy locks himself into a classroom. There are many kids inside of that classroom. By 11:35 he has locked himself into the classroom. There then are 911 calls that are received from kids inside of these rooms as well as teachers. And it is not until 12:50 that the door is finally breached and the suspect is killed.

That is 75 minutes that they allowed this guy with living kids and maybe teachers inside of that classroom to continue to have free rein over them there. This sounds like a complete failure by whoever was in charge there. And I know obviously you’re not an expert on this particular situation. But when you hear armed killer 75 minutes alone with kids that are still alive inside of that classroom, does that make any sense to you based on how you’ve been trained?

CARR: It’s not only training, it’s just a responsibility as citizens, as humans to run to the sound of the guns. And the first time police officers should be thinking about this is not when it happens. We have many years to go back and look at and take lessons from, from Columbine or you can go overseas and look at the Beslan school siege in September of 2004. That was Chechen terrorists three days in a school in Russia, over 300 people killed. So we see this time and time again.

We can juxtapose this with the situation in Nairobi, Kenya, a couple years ago where a suicide bomber walked into the courtyard of a hotel complex there in Nairobi, detonated, he was followed up by other terrorists with AKs from the Al-Shabaab terrorist organization who entered the hotel and started executing guests room by room. And there was an SAS, British special operator, in the area who heard the explosion, heard the gunfire, and what did he do?

He ran to the sound of the guns, he entered that hotel, and he started putting those terrorists down. I just had Meyli Chapin on my podcast recently. She was in one of those hotel rooms, and she was locked in her room for 17 hours. And she credits Christian Craighead, the SAS operator, with going in and saving her life and hundreds of other people. So juxtapose that with what we’ve seen in this country, and if the policy of these police departments is not to make entry into a school or a building, whatever it might be, well, then, it should add fuel to the argument that we need to harden these soft targets.

We could look at what happened in Columbine, we could look at what happened in Beslan, Russia, and think, “Oh, maybe our softest targets should be hardened.” We did it after September 11th with TSA and airports. And the fact that we have not done that to protect the softest targets out there and instead we put up signs that say “drug-free zone,” “gun-free zone” on these schools that are really an invitation to people that shows them that, “Oh, this place is a soft target and is not gonna be defended!”

It’s unconscionable that we do that and unforgivable. Regardless of what people think about the other parts of the issue but that we haven’t hardened that the same way we do our airports, our banks, our jewelry stores, the homes of our politicians, courthouses. We have ability to do that in this country. See what we just sent overseas and how much funding we just gave to a foreign nation overseas? Guess what? We can harden our softest targets here, and we can protect our children, and that should be a top priority.

CLAY: Can you imagine…? I mean, I’m sure there have been times when you disagreed with the decisions that were being made by your commanding officers, but there were reports that these expert SWAT team guys from Border Patrol arrived there by 12:15 and were begging to be allowed to go in, and they didn’t allow ’em to go in until 12:50.

Can you imagine how frustrating that would be for those guys to know that there are kids on the other sides of those locked doors, teachers on the other sides of those locked doors and they have 35 minutes that they have to sit there and cool your heels? Have you ever been in situation like that? Because I imagine there are a lot of people there who are members of the response team that were furious that they weren’t being allowed to go in, right, because the command structure and they’re making a decision that they disagree with.

CARR: I can only imagine how hard it will be for those guys to live with that each and every day for the rest of their lives thinking, “What could I have done? Should I have gone in?” And once again, the first time to be thinking about this is not when it happens. It’s well before, and as a leader, that’s your responsibility, is to be able to look at the situation on the ground and make a decision right there and enter. This is an in-extremis situation, and this is one of those ones where you have to go to in and do the job. You need to run to the sound of the guns.

There’s been a very short time in human history where people have relied on others to protect them, to dial 911. By its very nature, that means that people with guns are gonna be showing up late, they’re gonna be showing up after the fact. And at some point as citizens we need to take responsibility and realize that, hey, no one is coming. It is up to us. Be your own cavalry. Be your own first responder. It is our responsibility to protect our lives, those of our children.

In Israel, they have hardened their schools. And those are hard targets and not only are they hard targets from the outside looking in if they’re getting cased by a terrorist, by someone who wants to do harm to those inside, but also if someone does make entry, guess what? Most of those teachers are carrying concealed. They look at it as their responsibility to protect the students in their charge. And in this country, for whatever reason, we don’t believe that that is the case. And we get what we have here over the last couple days. It’s just heartbreaking.

CLAY: Yeah, Jack, I talk about an all-systems failure here. Obviously, the person who’s most responsible for this is the murderer. But our response to him is instructive, and I’ve used as an example, when a plane goes down we go find the black box and figure out what caused the plane to go down to try to avoid that ever happening again. The gunman went in an open door. The kids were not locked into their classrooms for whatever reason.

We still have more details to find out there. And then it took the police 75 minutes to breach the door to be able to get to the gunman, even though they were there within two minutes of the gunman entering school. So for people out there who say, “Well, the open door wouldn’t have mattered,” actually — you know this — even if he pulls out his gun and starts shooting at the door, first of all, maybe someone locks the classroom doors although why they weren’t locked already is a fantastic question that needs to be examined. But also it gives the police officers who were two minutes behind him more time to respond.

He might have cut himself up trying to get through that door. It might have taken him an additional 45 seconds or a minute. There might well be people alive today — they might be all alive except for the shooter — if that door had been locked. And so trying to figure out how this all-systems failure happens is a big part of trying to prevent, as you started, Jack, telling us what needs to happen to avoid it happening again.

CARR: That’s right. We have plenty of lessons we can look at. We neglect to do that in this country for whatever reason, we think in terms of four-year election cycles, eight-year election cycles, for the real deep thinkers among us, but we neglect to go back, look at the pages of history, take the lessons, and apply them going forward as wisdom. So what can we do based off this?

Well, we can do the same things that we should have done after the Beslan school siege in 2004, what we should have done after Columbine, what we should have done after all these school shootings. It doesn’t have to be a school shooting. It’s any sort of structure or a building. It is a soft target and therefore attractive to terrorists or people who want to do harm to those inside. We can harden these targets. There you are plenty of lessons learned, and we can make it happen in this country.

We can look at Israel. And so regardless of all the political infighting going on, back and forth, that’s gonna happen. Okay, fine. In the meantime, harden our targets and protect our children. And then as citizens we have to realize that the police are gonna show up late, they’re gonna show up afterward. So be your own cavalry. Be your own first responder. Get that training and be prepared to protect your life and people that you love. That is our responsibility as citizens. And it’s one of our primary responsibilities as citizens.

CLAY: Jack, we appreciate your service as we get ready for this Memorial Day weekend. You are former Navy SEAL sniper, New York Times best-selling author of In the Blood. Over Memorial Day Weekend, what sort of reflections do you have about the people you served with who aren’t here and the people who historically have given us the freedoms that we have today?

CARR: That’s right. For some of us, every day is Memorial Day in this country, and not just those of us who lost friends downrange but those who appreciate what was sacrificed from the inception of this country up through today so we can have these freedoms, options, and opportunities. My daughter and I recently went to Pearl Harbor this last December to the 80th anniversary commemoration event.

We took 63 veterans aged 96 to 104 back to Pearl Harbor, and my daughter who’s 16 got to sit across the table from these guys and listen to those stories now she has a touchpoint with that generation and an appreciation for all that was sacrificed so that she could have the freedoms that she has today. So I would encourage every family in this nation to find a local memorial to take their family there this weekend.

And to talk really about the people who risked everything and those who sacrificed everything and then what our responsibilities are as citizens today to preserve those for the next generation, because really the decisions that we make today are not about us. It’s about our children, our grandchildren, about those future generations. So appreciating what was sacrificed for us should be at the top of the list for every American.

CLAY: Jack, fantastic stuff. I appreciate you making the time for us on this Friday. And thank you for your service, and I hope you and your family have a good Memorial Day Weekend.

CARR: Thank you so much. Take care.

CLAY: That’s Jack Carr.