President Joe Biden on Monday welcomed the “Tennessee Three” – the trio of state lawmakers who were targeted by GOP leadership after leading gun control protests in the state capital – to the White House, and hailed them for ”standing up for our kids” during a meeting in the Oval Office.
Mr Biden also condemned state Republicans in Tennessee while speaking with state legislators Justin Pearson, Justin Jones, and Gloria Johnson. Mr Pearson and Mr Jones – who are both Black men – were briefly expelled from their legislative seats by the GOP supermajority that controls the Tennessee House of Representatives, while Ms Johnson, a white woman, was spared by one vote.
“What the Republican legislature did was shocking, it was undemocratic,” said the president. He added that while his administration had overseen passage of “the most signifncant gun laws" in decades, “there’s more to do”.
Rep Jones said that sitting in the Oval Office, he was reminded about the impact that dramatic protests can have on the nation.
“As I was sitting in the Oval Office, I saw the bust of Dr [Martin Luther] King. I saw the bust of Rosa Parks. I saw the bust of Cesar Chavez,” he told reporters following the presidential metting.
“What all those people did is they acted outside of the political paradigm of what was possible and they’ve changed political realities. That’s what we talked about. I made a direct ask to the president if we could do something outside of the ordinary.”
The young Democratic lawmaker argued this approach has already borne fruit, with the Tennessee Three’s house protest arguably prompting the Republican governor of Tennessee to call for a special session to address gun reform.
“It’s going to take us just not seeing this as a politically inevitability,” Mr Jones added. “We have to organize for this as a movement. This is our Selma moment.”
In June of last year, Mr Biden signed the first major piece of gun safety legislation to pass Congress in decades; the bill expanded background checks for younger buyers, expanded restrictions for domestic abusers, and created incentives for states to pass so-called “red flag laws”.
Of the lawmakers, the president added during the meeting: “If you stand up for kids, you’re standing up our communities and democratic values.”
Mr Biden invited the lawmakers to the White House during a phone call last week. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Mr Biden wanted to thank all three “for speaking out and for standing their ground, and being very clear about what's needed to protect their communities”.
Ms Jean-Pierre also said the president was “proud” and “appreciative” to see the three state representatives calling for stronger gun restrictions, particularly a ban on so-called assault weapons.
Mr Jones and Mr Pearson were expelled from the Tennessee state legislature earlier in April after joining with gun violence protesters in the state’s capital; they were almost immediately reinstated by their respective local governing boards, and returned triumphantly to the chamber just days later.
Ms Johnson, meanwhile, has made clear that she believes her different treatment to be the result of her race. Republicans in the legislature denied this, but have been fiercely criticised for the obviously unequal consequences for the three lawmakers.
The city of Nashville, where the legislature meets, was the site of a recent mass shooting wherein a 28-year-old suspect was named in the killings of several adults and children at an elementary school.
With additional reporting by agencies
