Two Democratic state legislators who organised a gun control demonstration that disrupted legislative business last week have been ejected from the Tennessee statehouse.
Justin Jones and Justin Pearson were both expelled by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives by votes of 72–25 and 69–26, respectively.
Gloria Johnson, a third Democratic lawmaker who participated in the protest, was the subject of an expulsion vote that fell short.
Since a school shooting, hundreds of demonstrators have packed the state capitol.
Three children were among the six people slain in the Covenant School shooting on March 27 in Nashville.
The expulsion of Mr. Jones and Mr. Pearson represents the first time in Tennessee’s modern history that such a decision has been made without the consent of both parties.
A motion to dismiss Ms. Johnson was defeated by one vote, falling short of the necessary two-thirds majority. The score was 65 to 30. The audience in the chamber cheered for her.
On Thursday, lawmakers fought for hours about the changes. The shouts of the demonstrators who are still gathered outside the statehouse could be heard inside the chamber.
Former Representative Jones, who entered the chamber holding hands with Mr. Pearson and Ms. Johnson, spoke on the House floor and referred to the expulsion vote as a “farce of democracy.”
He called the action a “violation.” The three of us speak for over 200,000 Tennesseans, and this is an attempt to stifle and undermine their will.
Last Thursday, Mr. Jones and his two colleagues entered the House chamber and began shouting, “No action, no peace,” which caused the proceedings to halt for about an hour.
The three members maintained that even though they disobeyed House norms by speaking before being recognised, their acts did not justify their expulsion.
Republicans, meanwhile, asserted that the group had “brought chaos and dishonour to the House.”
Republican House Speaker Cameron Sexton likened the episode to the Capitol Riots when he declared on Thursday that the Democrats’ conduct amounted to an uprising.
Depending on how you look at it, what they did today was “equal, at least equivalent, perhaps worse, to doing an uprising in the State Capitol,” he said.
Votes for expulsion are incredibly infrequent. Just twice have members of the Tennessee House of Representatives been voted out of office. In 1980, it ousted a sitting politician who had been found guilty of accepting bribes, and in 2016, it expelled a majority whip who had been accused of sexual misbehaviour.
But both parties strongly backed those expulsions.
More than 20 proposals, some of which were related to school safety, were discussed by House members prior to Thursday’s voting.
Mr. Jones spoke out multiple times during the conversation, accusing his colleagues of responding to mass shootings with “band-aid” legislation.
Mr. Jones declared, “Action will not make our pupils safe. “I believe that it is our moral duty as political leaders to pay attention to these young people who are on the front lines and who are here sobbing and screaming for their life.”
Republican Mark White reacted angrily and said to Mr. Jones: “Observe me. Check out the remaining 97 [lawmakers]. Exactly this is what we’re aiming to achieve.”
“I have been up here for 14 years, and you have only been in this assembly for two or three months,” Mr. White added.
The firearms regulations in Tennessee are among the most liberal in the nation. State lawmakers passed a law allowing residents over the age of 21 to carry firearms openly and covertly without a permit in 2021.
To make it 18 years old, lawmakers and pro-gun organisations are working.
There is also no “red flag” legislation that would enable authorities to temporarily take lawfully owned firearms from someone deemed to pose a threat to themselves or others.
According to police, the Nashville gunman who started shooting last week at the for-profit Christian school legally bought seven different firearms.
Three of the guns were used to murder three nine-year-old kids and three school staff members.
