Are the Republicans in the Tennessee Legislature Lighting the Fires of Support for Major Gun Control?

 NPR: Tennessee Votes to Expel Legislator for Protesting

To say that this is not going to "play well nationally" is an understatement.  

Frankly, I don't think this is going to play well in Tennessee, either.  Joining in what was a popular protest to send a message to the state legislature after a high profile shooting in a private, Christian school where Evangelical Republicans are the obvious constituency, three Democrats in the Tennessee legislature faced expulsion for their participation.  As of this writing, Representative Justin Jones, of Nashville, and Representative Justin Pearson, of Memphis have been expelled while Representative Gloria Johnson, of Knoxville, was not expelled.  All three were involved in a protest on the floor of the legislature in the wake of the murders of six people in a Nashville public school.  

This Looks Bad

What's really not going to play well is the fact that while all three representatives participated in the protest, and shared the responsibility for their involvement in it, the two black, male representatives were expelled.  The white female was not. And I don't really know what to say about that.   

It's not that the Tennessee legislature can be expected to be a model of democracy.  It would be majority Republican, even if the districts were not heavily gerrymandered to purposefully dilute Democratic votes, and more specifically, to dilute the black vote.  Racism runs thick in Tennessee, as bad as it is in Mississippi or Alabama, or, the new racist model of America, Florida.  The fact that this is what the state's legislature is doing, in the wake of a school shooting, speaks volumes about the leadership.  They might as well put a banner up over the legislative chamber declaring that it has been sold out to the gun lobby.  

We're just a week and a half away from a devastating and shocking school shooting in an affluent, white neighborhood of Nashville, in an affluent, white, Evangelical Christian school.  This wasn't some public school where they could attribute the atmosphere that fostered the shooting to bullying, or a dysfunctional social community in the school.  This shooting was in an Evangelical Christian school in the heart of the Bible belt, in a school where staff members, including two of the three who were murdered, had personal connections to the governor and to Senator Blackburn, who is a member of the church considered the "mother congregation" of Covenant Presbyterian, and which helped with the establishment of The Covenant School.  

This was in their backyard.  And still, all we get from either of them is more thoughts and prayers.  If they're not going to do it for their own, then I think that's a sign that they don't give a damn.  

Is There Enough Frustration to Demand Action? 

There's enough frustration to demand action, but getting it, from a legislature bought and paid for by the gun lobby, like Tennessee, is another story.  People have a tendency to fall asleep, politically, and don't pay attention to the implications that become realities when voters don't show up, until there's a crisis.  Then, in some cases, the damage has been done, the way state constitutions are written make it virtually impossible to make changes and there's so much polarization that it is almost impossible to motivate enough people to overcome the imbalance with an election.  

We are watching an ex-president flaunt the law, threaten politicians, judges, district attorneys, anyone who gets in his way, incite his followers to commit violence to subvert the law and avoid behind held accountable, and get away with it.  Any ordinary American who had threatened a judge about to hear their case, and pose, on social media, with a baseball bat aimed at the head of the district attorney would have been held in jail without bail until the trial, as a consequence of those threats.  The ex-president flies home to dinner in his hotel home in Florida and immediately breathes out more threats.  

But on the other side, three Tennessee legislators who joined in a protest on the floor of the house, as advocates for the control of assault weapons are immediately kicked out of the legislature, or, at least, the ones who were racial minorities were kicked out.  Why?  Because, for more than a decade, Republicans plotted ways to extend their majority to the point where it has no restraints, because it exceeds the constitutional two-thirds threshold required to override any restraints. Because they can.  And because, at the heart of the issue, the two Democrats who were expelled from the Tennessee House represent constituencies that are opposed to the Republican agenda in almost every other way.  

Have we had enough yet?  They are showing us how we should be treating the failed ex-president.  Swift action, follow the rules that are allowed, and put a gag order on him, shutting up his pie hole or incarcerating him until his trial.  

Are we tired of having schools and churches shot up by gunmen who don't even have to sign a registration slip to buy multiple weapons, attacking children they don't even know indiscriminately, because they have lost their mind?   

I get it, that in a state like Tennessee, it is hard for someone who supports progressive democracy to get motivated enough to vote in an election that seems already stacked in favor of the extremists.  Voter registration in Tennessee, among Republicans and independents, has remained at about the same level for the past three election cycles.  Democratic voter registration has declined slightly, but turnout in more heavily Democratic precincts has dropped considerably.  Just about half of Tennessee adults over 18 eligible to vote are registered.  It's less than half in most of the state's precincts where the majority of the voters cast ballots for Democrats.  So I get it, that trying to get things done through the ballot box is not going to yield results any time soon, though these kinds of events do help erode independent support for Republican politicians. 

But the size and scope of the protest at the state capitol got their attention.  If people feel strongly enough to show up and protest, peacefully, not in the way that Trump expects his protesters to behave, it does have a way of visibly showing legislators that the status quo is shifting and their secure district might be seeing a shift in numbers as a result of the effect of frustration, over the Dobbs decision and now, over gun control.  These kinds of issues are the sparks that motivate voter registration and turnout, things Democrats need to happen in several places right now.  

Gun control advocates just gained two highly visible spokesmen tonight.  Their visibility and influence will likely be more effective outside the legislature now, after this event, than it would have been inside.  If nothing else, there is now even more pressure on the Tennessee legislature, and on its governor, about controlling assault weapons, than existed before either the school shooting or this strange, undemocratic, racist response to a protest.  

This has also drawn attention to the fact that racism is still alive and well in the state of Tennessee.  I'll be disappointed if that's not part of the narrative, because it seems to be quite obvious.  And I hope this incident will be a catalyst in bringing about some real change to the Tennessee legislature, as well as to others around the country where the same thing goes on.  This can't be ignored.