AFT’s Weingarten and Teachers Unify’s Abbey Clements Respond to Madison School 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 a shooting Monday at Abundant Life Christian School, a private K-12 school in Madison, Wis., that left at least two people and the alleged shooter dead.

"We are devastated. Schools should be the safest places in the country, and with every shooting, it becomes clearer they are not.

"Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes is correct: We need to stop asking why schools don't have bulletproof glass and metal detectors and start asking why they need to have them.

"We are mourning for the families of those killed and injured in Madison and the students, educators and school staff who endured this horrific tragedy. As we pass the 12-year mark of the Sandy Hook shooting, we are also thinking of the survivors of school shootings across the country.

"Every incident of school gun violence retraumatizes survivors and scares parents and teachers who know their sacrosanct responsibility is to ensure that kids who go to school in the morning return home safely in the afternoon.

"We don't have to live this way. There are policies and practices that could help solve this public health crisis. We should revisit our efforts to remove weapons of war from our streets and communities, fund community violence intervention programs, enforce background checks and safe-storage laws, ban high-capacity magazines and pass more extreme risk protection laws.

"Teachers, students and parents need Congress to act to keep guns out of the hands of children."

# # # #

The AFT represents 1.8 million pre-K through 12th-grade teachers; paraprofessionals and other school-related personnel; higher education faculty and professional staff; federal, state and local government employees; nurses and healthcare workers; and early childhood educators.