Teachers union president Randi Weingarten called for gun confiscation Tuesday, saying the U.S. must follow "what other great democracies" have done to ban guns, following the shooting at a Christian Nashville school.
Weingarten addressed the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Tuesday morning regarding the aftermath of the school shooting that killed three children and three adults. After having a moment of silence for the victims, she reignited calls to ban "assault weapons."
"Today, we renew our call for common sense gun safety legislation, including a ban on assault weapons. This is an epidemic," Weingarten said.
She added, "It’s an epidemic that our great nation must solve. And how many lives will be shattered before we have the courage to do what Scotland did, what Australia did, what New Zealand did, what other great democracies do? We must solve this epidemic, and that’s up to us."
Democratic politicians frequently point to Scotland, Australia and New Zealand banning guns in the wake of mass shootings to support gun bans in the U.S.
Scotland got the U.K. to ban handguns and Australia issued a mandatory gun buyback program in 1996 of semi-automatic rifles and shotguns. Meanwhile, New Zealand enacted a semi-automatic weapons ban days after the 2019 Christchurch shooting that killed 50 people in two mosques.
Bans and "mandatory" buybacks all necessitate the confiscation of guns to be enforced.
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While appearing later on MSNBC's "Deadline: White House," Weingarten claimed her words had been "doctored" to suggest she had called for gun confiscation.
"Frankly, I saw today in my speech when I called on us to do a moment of silence for the Tennessee Christian school to, you know, in a speech that I was giving to public school parents and teachers, but to also renew a call for the assault weapons ban. And then somebody doctored the speech and said I was calling to confiscate guns. So, all day long that’s what I’ve been dealing with," Weingarten said.
She insisted, "But the point is, the point they want to make is to widen the despair, widen the anxiety, and not actually solve the problems we need to solve, which is gun violence, learning loss, the sadness that kids have. So what I try to do today in my speech and in the defense of public education was to talk about not just the problems but four things we could actually do to transform education in America."
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Elsewhere in her AFT address, Weingarten attacked efforts by Republican politicians such as Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., to push "culture wars" as a way "to undermine public schools."
"What started as fights over pandemic-era safety measures has morphed into fearmongering: False claims that elementary and secondary schools are teaching critical race theory; disgusting, unfounded claims that teachers are grooming and indoctrinating students; and pronouncements that public schools push a ‘woke’ agenda, even though they can’t or won’t define what they mean. Banning books and bullying vulnerable children. School board meetings descending into screaming matches. This is an organized and dangerous effort to undermine public schools," Weingarten said.
