By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
The president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) has called for the same kind of gun prohibition experienced in Australia and New Zealand following mass shootings in those countries, what Second Amendment activists call “compensated confiscation.”
Randi Weingarten reportedly “addressed” the AFT Tuesday, declaring, “Today, we renew our call for common sense gun safety legislation, including a ban on assault weapons. This is an epidemic,” according to Fox News.
“It’s an epidemic that our great nation must solve,” Weingarten added. “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.”
However, Weingarten asserted to MSNBC’s “Way Too Early” that “assault weapons have more rights than children” in this country, while complaining that Republicans want to ban books rather than guns.
Fox News also reported Weingarten claimed her remarks to NBC had been “’doctored’ to suggest she had called for gun confiscation.’”
But when people are required to turn in their firearms, that’s confiscation whether or not they are financially compensated, say activists.
Australia in 1996 launched a “mandatory gun buyback” program following a mass shooting in that country. The “buyback” applied to semiautomatic rifles and shotguns, and was branded as “compensated confiscation” because gun owners had no option to keep their firearms.
In New Zealand it was the same story in 2019 following attacks by a single killer on two mosques in Christchurch that claimed a total of 50 victims.
Neither country has a constitutional provision like the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution or right-to-bear-arms provisions found in most state constitutions.
In a separate report, Fox News also noted a comment from CNN National Security Analyst Juliette Kayyem that could amount to an admission that what gun rights advocates have said for years is correct.
“Pronouns do not kill children, people with guns kill children,” she said, essentially acknowledging people are responsible for gun-related violent crime, not the firearm, itself.
Kayyem was alluding to the way slain Covenant Presbyterian school Audrey E. Hale allegedly identified as a male. Hale is being identified as “transgender.”
Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) told Fox News the Monday shooting should be investigated as a hate crime because Hale apparently targeted the Christian school, where she was once a student.
“What police have told us in Nashville,” Hawley said during an interview, “is that this was targeted at this Christian school, the Christian students, the Christian employees and that they believe it was definitely premeditated and there was a deliberate attempt to target the school. We need to be clear that when you target people of faith, that is a hate crime.”
The Daily Mail is also reporting that a transgender activist group calling itself the Trans Resistance Network, described as a “fringe group,” has stirred a hornet’s nest by asserting in a statement that Hale “felt [she] had no other effective way to be seen than to lash out by taking the life of others, and by consequence, [herself].”
The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms came out swinging against anti-gunners, stating, “America has a mental health crisis, not a firearms crisis.”
“Firearms don’t have a brain to hate with, or a finger to pull their own trigger,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb.
“But this tragedy also reminds us of the need to make schools a hard target,” he added. “Those on the left do not want school resources officers on the job. They argue for reducing police manpower overall while dangerous, violent people wait to prey on our most vulnerable citizens; school children and older Americans. And then they demand honest people give up their guns.
“The reason most Americans own firearms is to protect themselves against mentally unstable, violent people and evil, dangerous criminals,” Gottlieb stated.
