Reinstated Tennessee Lawmaker Promises Every New Bill He Files Will Be on Guns

Tennessee state Representative Justin Jones is back in the seat Republicans expelled him from after the Democrat stood in solidarity with thousands protesting gun violence. And now, he promises that every single bill he introduces as a “new member” will be focused on advancing the fight that prompted his expulsion: stopping gun violence.

“They told me today I can file 15 bills because I’m now technically a new member. Every one of those bills is going to have to do with commonsense gun laws,” Jones told CNN on Monday. “Every single one of those bills is going to have to do with that because that’s what these young people are begging us to do. And so when I come tomorrow, I’m going to work on that legislation, get it to the speaker’s office, and let’s take action before we adjourn from session.”

Jones was expelled from the Tennessee state legislature last week, before the Nashville Metro Council unanimously voted Jones right back on Monday night. He and colleague Justin Pearson, who are both Black, were expelled by Republicans after standing in solidarity with thousands of Tennesseans protesting gun violence in the aftermath of the Nashville mass shooting that left three children and three adults dead. Their colleague Gloria Johnson, who is white, joined them in the protests but survived an expulsion proceeding by one vote.

Jones and Pearson, if reelected as expected, will be interim representatives until special elections are held for both districts.

Republicans, in their anti-democratic efforts to remove members inconvenient to their ideology, have in effect lost on all counts. By so blatantly disregarding public concern after a horrifying mass shooting, they’ve awakened and mobilized thousands of Tennesseans who may have previously been apolitical, unmotivated, or even conservative. They’ve brought nationwide attention to their misdoings—not just the expulsion of members who stood in solidarity with parents, teachers, and students but also the way they have used their supermajority to make up their own rules, filing bills with no notice to the public and killing other bills on no coherent basis other than their own personal preferences.

Finally, they’ve brought millions of people’s attention and support to Jones, Pearson, and Johnson. And with Jones returning, and Pearson perhaps not far behind, the expulsion is not martyrdom but the start of a new battle against the Republican Party.

Millions of people are now monitoring Republicans’ every single move—and what they choose to do with every one of the 15 gun control bills Jones has promised to file. Any further inaction is all the more blatant in the aftermath of yet another mass shooting in neighboring Louisville, Kentucky. Republicans’ time of lazily waving away bills or making up their own rules has come to an end.

And it was all their own doing.

A Florida Republican lawmaker compared transgender people to “mutants” from the X-Men while debating yet another bill that would curtail LGBTQ rights.

During a debate Monday about House Bill 1421, which would ban gender-affirming care for minors and prohibit trans people from using the bathroom that aligns with their gender, Republican Representative Webster Barnaby went on a strange and vitriolic rant.

“I’m looking at society today, and it’s like I’m watching an X-Men movie,” he said. “It’s like we have mutants living among us on planet Earth.”

“This is the planet Earth, where God created men male and women female!” he continued. “The Lord rebuke you Satan, and all of your demons and all of your imps who come and parade before us.”

Barnaby ended his rant by urging his colleagues to vote for H.B. 1421, which would also make it a third-degree felony for doctors to provide gender-affirming care to trans kids.

Republicans across the country have introduced bills targeting a variety of LGBTQ rights, particularly health care for trans and nonbinary people. Most insist they are protecting children by doing so, but Barnaby went right ahead and said the quiet part out loud: They don’t see trans people as human and worthy of care.

If Republicans really wanted to protect children, they would leave gender-affirming care alone. Such treatments decrease the amount of depression and anxiety that trans and nonbinary teenagers feel, and it makes them less likely to consider suicide. But by passing legislation targeting LGBTQ people, lawmakers demonize the community and put people at risk of real harm.

It’s been just days since Tennessee Republicans brazenly expelled Democratic Representatives Justin Jones and Justin Pearson from the House, but Jones is already on his way back.

On Monday, the Nashville Metro Council voted 36–0 to send Jones back to represent the constituents who already elected him.

Typically, the council would have elected an interim representative, a process that could’ve taken at least four weeks. But members decided to vote to suspend the rules and hold a nomination vote for Jones’s reappointment as the interim representative.

The vote will have Jones back in the state Capitol for House business Monday. The 4:30 p.m. vote came just prior to a House session scheduled for 5 p.m.

Jones, Pearson, and their colleague Gloria Johnson disrupted House proceedings two weeks ago, in solidarity with thousands of children, teachers, parents, and other residents who had been protesting against gun violence outside the state Capitol. The protests erupted after a Nashville school shooting left three children and three adults dead.

Johnson, who is white, survived an expulsion by just one vote. But Jones and Pearson, who are both Black, were expelled.

The Shelby County Commission, home to Memphis, will be hosting a special meeting on Wednesday to vote on an interim representative as well; the vote will essentially be a vote to determine whether the commission will reappoint Pearson back to his seat.

Both seats will still have special elections in the coming months, and Jones and Pearson have expressed their plans to run and officially retake their seats.

Not to be outdone, Republicans are still finding a way to impose their anti-democratic desires on the process. Republican state lawmakers are reportedly threatening to take away government funding for Memphis projects if Pearson is reappointed. The money being threatened is reportedly appropriated for schools and even sports stadiums, like NBA team Memphis Grizzlies’ FedExForum or the University of Memphis’s Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium.

Last week, Tennessee Republicans expelled two Black Democratic lawmakers, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, for standing in solidarity with the thousands of people demanding gun reform after the Nashville school shooting that left three children and three adults dead. What many have rightfully derided as an anti-democratic action seems to be more of a symptom of a broadly poisoned state legislature, in which Republicans are using their supermajority to make their own rules at whim.

An investigation conducted before last week’s drama from Nashville-based NewsChannel5 revealed how Tennessee Republicans have introduced legislation with no notice to the public, denied roll call votes on bills, and killed bills on the basis that their side apparently sounded louder in voice votes.

In so doing, they’ve shut down even the most inoffensive Democratic-led bills, like one that would direct schools to inform high schools seniors how to register to vote, or another that would study whether college ID cards could be used for voting.

“You have committee chairs single-handedly deciding whether bills live or die. Is that democracy?” NewsChannel 5’s Phill Williams asked Republican House Speaker Cameron Sexton, who responded by insisting that there’s no problem.

Yet a problem there is.

On the college student ID bill, pushed by the now-expelled Representative Jones, Republican Elections and Campaign Finance Subcommittee chair Tim Rudd gavelled the vote as a “No” before the voice vote was even finished. Such brazenness certainly cuts against the already condescending charges made by some Republicans last week that members like Jones and Pearson were complainers and not legislation pursuers.

NewsChannel5 gave Rudd the opportunity to explain why he killed the bill before even hearing the vote. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rudd said twice, with not an ounce of shame of what was clearly seen on camera.

Another bill, advanced by local students, that would’ve directed high schools to guide students on how they could register to vote, was denied a roll call vote by Republican Local Government chair John Crawford on the basis that the committee had already voted on an amendment to the bill.

House rules explicitly state that “a roll call vote shall be taken at the request of the sponsor of the bill or resolution under consideration.”

On the voice vote, it sounded to many in the room like the “Aye’s” had won. Crawford, however, deemed that the “No’s had it.”

“Democracy is dead here in Tennessee as it stands right now,” said House Democratic Caucus Chair Vincent Dixie, who sponsored the bill.

Tori Venable, from the libertarian group Americans for Prosperity, told NewsChannel5 how, with the House voice votes, a vote having “sounded one way, [can go] another way,” all by the unchecked discretion of the Republican majority.

On the student voter registration bill, Dixie had also attempted to file an amendment clarifying some language, but Crawford deemed it “untimely” and unacceptable. When NewsChannel5 asked about the rationale, Crawford talked himself in circles, first claiming that if someone makes a motion and gets a second, then he wouldn’t have a choice but to take it to a vote. When the local reporter pointed out that Dixie had received a second on his motion and Crawford had still denied the motion, Crawford then justified himself by saying, “Well, I said, We don’t take up any untimely filed amendments.’ We hadn’t taken any up to that point all year long.”

Two weeks later, House Speaker Sexton filed a last second amendment to a bill that no one else had seen. In this “untimely” scenario, Crawford gladly gavelled it through.

Contrary to Crawford’s claims, NewsChannel5 noted that their investigation found numerous other cases in which Republican chairs readily accepted late filed amendments the public had never seen.

“This is not democracy as far as I’m concerned,” said Democratic Representative Gloria Johnson, who survived her own Republican-led expulsion threat last week by just one vote.

Less than two weeks before Monday’s mass shooting at a bank in downtown Louisville, the state of Kentucky banned local law enforcement agencies from enforcing federal firearm laws.

The bill makes Kentucky a so-called “Second Amendment sanctuary” and prohibits local, state, or campus authorities from enforcing federal bans or regulations related to firearms, ammunition, or firearm accessories. It applies to any laws or regulations enacted since January 1, 2021.

On March 28, the bill became law after the Republican-led House and Senate overwhelmingly pushed it through, and Democratic Governor Andy Beshear neither signed nor vetoed the legislation, allowing the bill to become law.

And on Monday, at least five people were killed and another eight injured in a mass shooting.*

Kentucky’s law could counter regulations in the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, passed in the aftermath of the Buffalo supermarket and Uvalde elementary school shootings. Some of the regulations in that law include: banning people from buying guns if they had committed a disqualifying crime while under the age of 18; banning anyone from buying guns if they were found guilty of a domestic violence charge in a romantic relationship (regardless of marital status); and banning people from buying guns on behalf of criminals, terrorists, drug dealers, or people who are prohibited by law from receiving a gun.

Kentucky’s new law could be weaponized to stop such federal regulations on firearms, as well as any future gun control legislation or executive orders from the Biden administration.

Kentucky Republican Representative Savannah Maddox called the bill blocking even modest federal gun regulation “a step in the right direction” but added that “there is more work that needs to be done by our Republican Supermajority.”

So-called Second Amendment sanctuary laws have been deemed unconstitutional by numerous courts, most recently by a federal judge who struck down a similar policy in Missouri.

Meanwhile, the Kentucky legislature has been considering a slew of other pro-gun bills.

House Bill 542, also pushed by Representative Maddox, seeks to prevent colleges from passing any policies that ban people 21 years and older from carrying a concealed weapon on campuses. The bill would have overturned standing policy at every public college in Kentucky. Maddox had quietly tried to sneak the proposal into what was originally a bill about “workforce development.” Maddox has conceded the bill likely does not have enough votes for now to advance further, but it may gain future momentum after a similar bill succeeded and became law in West Virginia.

Another bill Maddox helped introduce in January would lower the age requirement for carrying a concealed gun from 21 to 18. And yet another she co-signed seeks to allow people to carry concealed weapons in schools.

Kentucky is not an anomaly. In Tennessee, a mass shooting occurred amid a concerted effort by state Republicans to loosen gun laws. Before a mass shooting left three children and three adults dead at a Nashville school, state Republicans passed a bill allowing people 21 and older to openly carry handguns without permits. Republicans there are now pushing to allow 18- and 19-year-old residents to carry any firearm—including weapons like AR-15s and shotguns—without permits.

The exact motives of the Louisville shooter are not yet clear. But in a society ravaged daily by mass shootings, in every possible segment of the public square, one would hope that there would be at least some movement toward lessening those incidents: making weapons of killing harder, not easier, to obtain; meaningfully increasing mental health and well-being support; creating a society where community and care, not isolation and individualism, are the norm.

But no, even while Monday’s shooting in Louisville marks the 146th mass shooting in 2023, Republicans seem to be rolling full-speed ahead on running those numbers up.

* This article has been updated with the latest statistics in the Louisville shooting.