Tennessee, the state that gave us the Ku Klux Klan and the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial, has done it again. The state House of Representatives just voted overwhelmingly to eject two members who had the audacity to demand that protecting kids was more important than protecting guns.
Not just any two members: These were a pair of what the white Republican supermajority apparently considered uppity young black men who offended their sense of decorum by loudly (they used bullhorns) but peacefully protesting the body’s refusal to do anything about gun violence days after the murder of three nine-year-old children and three adults.
The slaughter took place at a Christian school just a few miles down Charlotte Avenue from the Capitol building in Nashville, which is on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, named for another victim of Tennessee racist violence.
No common-sense reforms
Even common-sense reforms like red flag laws, background checks, raising the minimum age for gun purchases and assault rifle bans are apparently too radical. Instead, the Tennessee legislature plans to lower the age of no-permit carry from 21 to 18, said Rep. Clay Doggett, the Republican chair of the criminal justice subcommittee.
Gov. Bill Lee campaigned to allow gun owners to carry loaded handguns without a permit “to protect against evil.” He also wants to arm teachers and school administrators because that would mean “hopefully zero deaths.”
Similar cowardice was reflected in Washington by the invertebrate Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy and Republicans across Capitol Hill. McCarthy said he wants to see “all the facts” before discussing anything about gun violence. The old response of offering “thoughts and prayers” is no substitute for solutions, but that remains the go-to Republican answer.
“You got to do more than prayer,” Tennessee’s lone Democratic congressman, Steve Cohen, said in an MSNBC interview. His said his stridently pro-gun colleagues are “part of the danger… they are so attached to guns and there’s no hope” they’ll change.
Cohen, a Democrat, is Jewish as is Rep. David Kustoff, one of only two Jewish Republicans in the 118th Congress. Kustoff tweeted he was “heartbroken” over the news and “praying” for victims and families. That’s about it.
Nearly every Republican in the Tennessee House voted to evict freshman Representatives Justin Jones, 27, and Justin Pearson, 29, by invoking a 1796 statute against bringing “disorder and dishonor” to the chamber.
A third offender, Rep. Gloria Johnson, was not expelled. She explained why: “Well, I think it’s pretty clear. I’m a 60-year-old white woman and they are two young black men.”
In other words, this is about more than guns. It is about good ole southern white folk teaching their young black colleagues to know their place, as racists across the South put it for so long.
JONES TOLD his colleagues, “We called for you all to ban assault weapons and you respond with an assault on democracy.” Republican Andrew Farmer called the protest a “temper tantrum.” Speaker Cameron Sexton called it an “insurrection.”
There were only two prior evictions in Tennessee’s House since Reconstruction, one for “inappropriate sexual conduct with at least 22 women” and the other for accepting a bribe.
Axios has suggested this might make it easier for other states to mete out punishment. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis might push his rubber stamp legislature to remove all “woke” members, whatever that may mean. He has already made it more difficult for protesters who disagree with him to hold rallies at the state Capitol, and he has fired a prosecutor who objected to his stand on abortion rights, The Washington Post reported.
Oklahoma Republicans censured an openly binary Democrat lawmaker for allowing a protester to take refuge in their office. Wisconsin’s GOP supermajority began talking about impeaching a judge who was just elected to the Supreme Court last week.
Republicans have used their majorities to silence the opposition in Montana, Mexico and Florida, the Post noted. Virginia’s Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin tried (unsuccessfully) to force a county school board to shorten the terms of members with whom he disagreed.
Justin Jones, the evicted legislator, held up a sign saying, “Protect kids, not guns.”
It’s like the movie Groundhog Day. There’s a mass killing or a school shooting. The Democrats call for gun control legislation. Republicans offer “thoughts and prayers” and say it is premature to discuss gun safety, first let the emotions cool down and collect all the facts. Nothing gets done, of course, until the next shooting, and the can gets kicked down the road again.
Gun owners and the gun industry carry a lot more clout with Republicans than children. Just look at the US Congress.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who helped negotiate a modest gun-control package last year after a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, rejected calls for expanded background checks on gun purchases, according to The Washington Post. “I would say we’ve gone about as far as we can go,” he declared.
The GOP-led House, where many Republicans wear AR-15 lapel pins, has even less appetite for gun safety or decorum. Not one of her colleagues uttered criticism when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), heckled the president during his State of the Union Address, or when she suggested school shootings were really “false flag” events staged by anti-gun forces to force new restrictions – the ultimate insult to grieving families.
Instead, this week the House will take up a Republican proposal to further limit funding for food stamps and increase work requirements for recipients. Also, on the GOP chopping block, according to Rep. Rosa DeLauro – the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee – is cutting access to Head Start preschool and childcare; cutting food and nutrition assistance for millions of women, infants and children; eliminating the Pell Grants program for college students; cutting rental assistance for the elderly, disabled and poor families, and reducing job training. Similar efforts to cut food stamp benefits are being pushed in the Senate by Sen. Rick Scott (R-Florida).
To those naive enough to ask how many more children must die in school shootings for Republicans to care enough to do anything about gun violence, the answer is go watch Groundhog Day. And if you’re going to talk about it, make sure you are appropriately respectful, maintain decorum and show respect for your (bigoted white) superiors.
The writer is a Washington-based journalist, a consultant, a lobbyist and a former American Israel Public Affairs Committee legislative director.