In the wake of the deadly mass shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville last week, Tennessee’s Republican-dominated state legislature had a wide variety of options. The GOP majority could’ve taken steps to protect the public by considering a new red-flag law, for example. Republican lawmakers also had the option of expanding background checks or advancing an assault-weapons ban.
The good news is that GOP policymakers in the Volunteer State did, in fact, take dramatic action the week after the massacre. The bad news is, the dramatic action Tennessee Republicans took was to stifle dissent in the state Capitol. NBC News reported overnight:
Republican legislators in Tennessee voted Thursday to expel two Black Democrats from the state House over their protests on the chamber floor against gun violence last week, while a vote to expel a third, white Democratic representative fell short. In the first vote, Republicans expelled Rep. Justin Jones. The second vote, to kick out Rep. Gloria Johnson, failed. Republicans then voted to remove Rep. Justin Pearson.
The series of events began with last week’s school shooting, which generated large demonstrations at the state Capitol, with Tennesseans pleading with Republicans to take steps to protect the public from gun violence.
As part of the protest, three Democratic members of the state House minority headed to the chamber’s floor to voice their support for the demonstrators’ cause. Silenced by GOP leaders, the trio — Gloria Johnson, Justin Jones, and Justin Pearson — spoke through a megaphone, calling on their colleagues to “protect kids, not guns.”
Having broken the decorum rules of the institution, the Democratic lawmakers were soon after stripped of their committee assignments. But for members of the Republican majority — some of whom equated a peaceful protest with the Jan. 6 attack, despite the fact that no one broke into the state capitol, no one was harmed, and there was no property damage in…
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