“We’re not going to fix it.” That instantly infamous line, delivered by a Republican congressman in the wake of a mass shooting at a private school in Nashville late last month, was supposed to be the lesson learned by anyone hoping for a robust response to another mass murder. Dispensing with thoughts, prayers and other feints in the direction of social or political responsibility, Representative Tim Burchett spoke truth to powerlessness, and did so unambiguously: It’s unfortunate that so many of you will die, but we won’t take any of the actions that we know could help you live.
Yet that ugly lesson went decisively unlearned. Instead, young activists marched to the Tennessee capitol demanding laws that value human life more than the convenience of firearm consumers.
In response, Republican leaders in the state legislature decided enough was enough; they would deliver a lesson that the kids wouldn’t soon forget. They expelled two Black lawmakers who had joined the protests and re-established the legislature as a safe haven for radical gun culture.
Once again, the lesson plan was upended. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, the ousted legislators, challenged the Republicans, capturing the nation’s attention. Journalists began pointing out the history of crude, transgressive behavior in the ranks of the same Republicans singing hosannas to decorum. GOP leaders had sought a quick, vicious putdown of the upstarts. Instead, their own moral bankruptcy became the story.
It got worse. Both expelled lawmakers were reinstated. They would return to the legislature super-empowered, with national name recognition, national fundraising bases and a nationwide network of supporters.
But there was a bigger surprise to come. Tennessee Republican Governor Bill Lee, in what a local news report called a “pivot,” asked the legislature to support an expanded red flag law allowing authorities to confiscate guns from people who “are a danger to themselves or to the population.” The current law is applicable only in cases of domestic abuse, sexual assault or stalking.
In addition, Lee signed an executive order calling for greater speed in providing information to the state’s criminal background check system and for more accuracy — the better to stop dangerous people from making legal gun purchases. That’s a small start on the road to rational gun laws. But it’s a start that almost certainly is a product of youthful political activism.
In sum, the kids and their legislative champions, who were supposed to learn that they were powerless in the face of conservative reaction, have learned the opposite. The youth of Tennessee and elsewhere saw that they can win in a red state against concerted, unified, powerful opposition. As Greg Sargent wrote in the Washington Post, “the more onerous the use of state power in these situations, the more attention it gets.”
It's similar to the formula that powered the Civil Rights movement against morally bankrupt apartheid regimes across the South. (For anyone eager to indulge the false notion that nothing changes, we have evolved from firehoses and attack dogs in Birmingham to cluelessness and condescension in Nashville. That’s not the end of the campaign, but it still signals a lot of change.) Previous racial and generational conflicts weren’t easily, or even permanently, won. This one won’t be either.
Jones and Pearson repeatedly pointed out that they were fighting not just gun pathology but authoritarianism, thereby laying a conceptual framework for understanding the many battles still to come. Those battles won’t all result in victories for youth and multiracial democracy. But the Battle of Tennessee did.
____
ABOUT THE WRITER
Francis Wilkinson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering U.S. politics and policy. Previously, he was an editor for the Week, a writer for Rolling Stone, a communications consultant and a political media strategist.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
