Teachers union wants to turn educators into anti-gun activists :: 08/20/2023

I don’t deal with teacher’s unions.

When the pandemic hit, I started homeschooling my daughter. My son had graduated, but she was still in third grade. After spending the rest of that school year teaching her, even as the school itself didn’t, I found out that I could, in fact, homeschool.

The next year, the school still didn’t seem to have its crap together, and teacher’s unions were demanding schools remain closed, so we decided to just homeschool formally. After all, if I were going to have to teach her anyway, why not at least pick what she’d learn?

I haven’t regretted that decision once.

Yet there are times I see things from the teacher’s unions that have made me feel really good about it. This is just the latest one.

A teachers union conference in July encouraged educators to lobby for gun control, according to a conference agenda revealed by the Defense of Freedom Institute.

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the nation’s second-largest teachers union, held a “Together Educating America’s Children” (TEACH) Conference July 21-23 featuring professional development workshops to teach educators tools and strategies to “help kids and communities succeed,” according to the teachers union’s website. One professional development session offered, “Speaking of Gun Violence: How Do We Ensure Educator Voices Matter?” was taught by “Teachers Unify To End Gun Violence,” an organization that works to help pass gun control legislation, and encouraged educators to “collectively raise [their] voices for change,” according to the conference agenda.

“Join Teachers Unify to End Gun Violence to explore ways we can collectively raise our voices for change,” the session description reads. “There is not one educator or school staff member in our country who is untouched in some way by gun violence—from direct impact to impending fear, caring for and supporting students dealing with gun violence in their families and communities, to navigating traumatic drills, our voices should and do matter. Educators, students and school staff are on the frontlines of this public health crisis.”

Now, I’m not going to pretend that there isn’t some validity to this. Teachers have been killed in school shootings and I don’t doubt for a second that others have been concerned for their own welfare.

Yet why not clamor for something far less controversial, like increased security in schools?

In Nashville, for example, the killer’s first choice of a target was abandoned because security was too tight. They went to the Covenant School because they had less security.

So advocating for better security in our schools just makes a whole lot more sense than a general call for increased gun control, especially since there’s absolutely no gun control measure out there that will stop mass shootings from happening, much less stop school shootings.

Further, as a teacher’s union, one would expect them to advocate for teachers’ choices. As such, why not make a stand on allowing those teachers who want to carry a firearm to do so? Isn’t that in the interest of the union’s membership?

Of course, AFT is a teacher’s union that doesn’t actually care all that much about the teachers themselves. Union president Randi Weingarten has sided with anti-gun Democrats on literally everything else, even if it hurts students and teachers. Why would this be any different?

https://bearingarms.com/tomknighton/2023/08/17/teachers-union-gun-n73790