AFT’s Weingarten and Teachers Unify’s Abbey Clements Respond to Minnesota Shooting

WASHINGTON—AFT President Randi Weingarten and Abbey Clements, executive director of Teachers Unify to End Gun Violence and a survivor of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, issued the following statement after two children were killed and more than a dozen were injured in a mass shooting today at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis:

“Our hearts are broken for the Annunciation community and for the families who sent their children to school Wednesday morning expecting them to be safe and to come home. Every parent’s nightmare is to have their child’s future stolen by a bullet.

“We mourn for those who were killed, injured or traumatized by yet another devastating mass shooting.

“How tragic that this country’s leaders refuse to come together and make decisions to protect children and teens from their leading cause of death: firearms. What kind of a country allows kids to be shot up in their schools, over and over again?

“We cannot turn away from this horror. We must turn our empathy into action.

“We have a moral responsibility to protect our children. We must get guns out of the hands of those who would do harm in our schools, our places of worship, our workplaces, our streets, our homes.

“This should not be political. Schools should be safe havens for students to learn, make friends and build futures—not places for them to be traumatized or have their lives cut short by gun violence.”