WINCHESTER — U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., in town for a roundtable discussion about heroin on Monday, weighed in on the crisis facing law enforcement officers across the country, with eight killed in two recent incidents.

Five Dallas police officers were shot and killed — and seven injured — on July 7. Three more were killed and three wounded in Baton Rouge, La., on Sunday.

The shootings followed incidents in Baton Rouge, where police fatally shot a black man July 5, and in Minnesota where police shot and killed a black man the next day.

"Our law enforcement puts their lives on the line every day, and we need to stand up for them," Warner said during an interview with The Winchester Star after the roundtable discussion.

"There’s absolutely no justification for these kind of awful actions that are coming out of Dallas and Baton Rouge. At the same time, we also need to understand there needs to be, I think, movement on criminal justice reform."

There needs to be mutual respect among police and the communities they’re sworn to protect, he said.

"That’s going to be an ongoing process," he said. "In the short term, we’ve got to bring a halt to these kind of horrible assaults, horrible shootings."

Warner said he was referring to the shooting of law enforcement officers, and there are questions regarding some incidents police have had with citizens.

There are also issues involving firearms, he said.

"When you’re talking with law enforcement officers, I hear lots of concerns about some of the rules in some states where you’ve got open carry with long guns [permitted]," Warner said, "because that basically elevates every incident to a much more dangerous circumstance."

He said he thinks the "vast majority" of Americans, including gun owners, support legislation calling for those on no-fly lists to be banned from buying guns, and support gun shows being forced to follow the same rules as gun stores for sales.

"I’ve been disappointed that we’ve not been able to get to ‘yes’ on that," said Warner, who said he has an extensive history of supporting the Second Amendment.

Warner also shared with The Star his views on the recent coup attempt in Turkey.

"As a member of the [Senate] Intelligence Committee, I’ve been concerned for some time about the flow of [extremist] fighters moving to the front through Turkey, and that Turkey is not doing enough," he said.

Warner said he hopes Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s attention doesn’t get diverted too much by domestic issues.

He said the country is the front line in the fight against ISIS in Syria and Iraq.

"Turkey, five years ago, was modeled as a moderate Muslim state that had a functioning democracy," Warner said. "But we’ve seen in President Erdogan a real taking more and more control over things like the court system."

He said he hopes Erdogan doesn’t use punishing coup leaders as a way to clamp down on democratic institutions.

Warner said he will get a full briefing on the Turkey situation when he’s back in Washington, D.C., this week.