(ReclaimingAmerica.net) – Confirming what conservatives and gun rights activists have predicted would happen, Randi Weingarten, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) president, has called for confiscating firearms from their owners in the US as Australia, New Zealand, and Scotland have done it.
Weingarten, who chairs the second largest teachers’ labor union in the nation, spoke last week in the wake of the March 27 Nashville School Massacre in which a “trans man,” 28-year-old Audrey Hale, killed three kids and three staffers.
The union leader addressed the AFT to declare that the United States should do “what other great democracies” have done to ban guns, as cited by Fox News.
“Today, we renew our call for common sense gun safety legislation, including a ban on assault weapons. This is an epidemic,” Weingarten told the American Federation of Teachers.
“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,” she argued.
The Fox News report stresses that “Democratic politicians frequently point to Scotland, Australia and New Zealand banning guns in the wake of mass shootings to support gun bans in the US.”
After the 1996 Dunblane Massacre in Scotland, in which a teacher shot 16 of his students dead, Scotland convinced the UK to ban most handguns.
Also, in 1996, Australia began a mandatory buyback program for shotguns and semi-automatic rifles.
New Zealand introduced a ban on semi-automatic weapons after the 2019 Christchurch shooting, in which 50 people were killed in two mosques.
In a subsequent appearance on MSNBC, AFT president Randi Weingarten claimed her comments had been “doctored” to make them sound like she had urged gun confiscation.
“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,” Weingarten said.
“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,” she elaborated.
In her AFT speech, she also attacked GOP politicians such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for “pushing culture wars.”
“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… This is an organized and dangerous effort to undermine public schools,” Weingarten insisted.
Randi Weingarten calls for gun confiscation: Must 'have the courage to do' what Australia, New Zealand did https://t.co/KleO4IscRP
— Fox News (@FoxNews) March 29, 2023
