Vice President Kamala Harris took a last-minute trip Friday to Tennessee where she called for stricter gun laws and criticized the Republican-controlled state assembly, which was held a day earlier. Two black Democrats were expelled for their turn in protest Calls for more gun control after a School shooting In Nashville, six people were killed.
Harris received standing ovations, many standing ovations, when she told a crowd at Nashville’s historic Black Fisk University that the so-called three ousted Tennessee Representatives Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, and a third Democrat, Gloria Johnson, who avoided eviction by one person. Vote – were, in her words, silenced and stifled for advocating for the lives of school children.
George Walker IV / AP
“Let’s understand that the core issue is about fighting for the safety of our children,” Harris said. “It has been years now where they are taught to read and write and hide in a closet and remain silent if there is a mass shooting at their school, where our children, who have God’s ability to learn and lead, go to school in fear.”
She advocated for background checks, red flag laws, and restrictions on assault rifles.
“Let’s not make the wrong choice—either you support the Second Amendment or you want reasonable gun safety laws,” Harris said. “We can and should do both.”
Harris met privately with JonesPearson and Johnson, as well as with other elected officials and youth advocates for stricter gun control laws.
Prior to the event, the students and others lined up and down the building, hoping to enter the school’s memorial chapel. Inside, several young black women wore jackets bearing the initials of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the black sorority to which Harris belonged.
“It’s so exciting to see someone from my organization doing amazing, cool things,” said one of them, Jasmine Thrash.
Nashville Metro Councilman Zulft Swara addressed the crowd before Harris arrived, saying the expulsions “tell us exactly what we need to know about how the state views young black people” as they stand up for what they believe in. Evoking the city’s civil rights history, she said, “Just as John Lewis and Diane Nash did so many years ago, so will we.”
Pearson, Johnson and Jones entered the packed church to a standing ovation.
Ahead of the meeting, the White House said President Biden spoke with the three by phone and “thanked them for their leadership in seeking to ban assault weapons and standing up for our democratic values.” She added that he invited them to visit the White House in the near future.
In a statement earlier on Thursday, Biden called the expulsions “shocking, undemocratic and unprecedented.”
rather than discussing the merits of the case [of gun control]“These Republican lawmakers have chosen to punish, silence, and expel the duly elected representatives of the people of Tennessee,” the president said.
The expulsion of Jones and Pearson, both of whom were black, prompted accusations of racism. Johnson, who is white, was allowed to continue to serve in the chamber. The Republican leadership denied that race was a factor.
GOP leaders said Thursday’s actions — which have been used only a handful of times since the Civil War — were necessary to avoid setting a precedent in which lawmakers disrupting House proceedings through protest would be tolerated.
State Republican Rep. Gino Poulso said the three Democrats “effectively staged an insurrection.”
Most state legislatures retain the power to expel members, but it is rarely used as punishment for legislators accused of serious misconduct.
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