A gun-related special session of the Tennessee General Assembly culminated Tuesday in chaos, with two lawmakers almost getting into it amid the fracas.
Called in response to the Nashville mass shooting in March by a transgender man, the session concluded with no “major” gun safety legislation being approved by the GOP-dominated Assembly — prompting outrage from Democrats.
Included among the outraged Democrats was Rep. Justin Pearson, who infamously became a hero to the “resistance” left earlier this year after he was temporarily expelled for joining an unruly mob of so-called “protesters” at the state capitol.
In one particularly heated moment Tuesday, Pearson began following closely along and harassing Tennessee State House Speaker Cameron Sexton as Sexton was trying to leave the room. The speaker responded by trying to push past Pearson.
Watch:
WKRN NEWS 2 REPORTS FROM TN Special Session as radical Rep. Justin Pearson tries to physically ambush Speaker Sexton with a sign and is pushed away by security. pic.twitter.com/6I0H3iaoE4
— BPR based (@DumpstrFireNews) August 30, 2023
“What I can tell you, what I did feel, is as I turned and I came back, Rep. Pearson came and bumped me in my shoulder and pushed me to the left. I did feel that,” Sexton said in a press conference following the session, according to WHBQ.
Pearson has claimed something else entirely happened.
“I was standing there holding a sign that said ‘Protect kids, not guns,’ and then the Speaker moved ahead, walked forward, and then shoulder-checked me in the chest violently, and then he started to scream at me saying, ‘Don’t touch him,'” he later recalled.
Other Republican leaders such as state Rep. William Lamberth have chosen to side with Sexton.
“What you’ve seen is a couple bad apples trying to spoil the bunch. You’ve seen really two to three people trying to disrupt the work of 97 others and that’s unfortunate,” Lamberth said.
Pearson is now reportedly mulling whether to press for charges against Sexton.
“While I was saying to the Speaker that we are not doing enough, while I was saying that this is shameful and a disgrace to the people in the state of Tennessee, that we are tired of going to funerals, the Speaker violently shoved me in the chest. And then other members of his party also pushed me back towards the clerk’s desk,” Pearson later claimed, according to WREG.
Pearson has also since accused Sexton of being a “white supremacist”:
White supremacist speaker @CSexton25 violently shoved me today while I held my “Protect Kids, Not Guns!” sign. I’m infuriated by his actions but more infuriated by the INACTION of @tnhousegop to pass a SINGLE bill to prevent gun violence. This is how democracy dies. We must rise! https://t.co/LQXlqsreuS
— Justin J. Pearson (@Justinjpearson) August 30, 2023
None of this is to say the GOP-dominated Assembly passed nothing to help with gun violence. According to local station WATN, the Assembly did, in fact, pass a few bills that made “changes to state programs already in place.”
“These included adding more money to advertise a state program offering free gun safes and codifying an executive order already signed by the governor that set a 72-hour period for reporting new criminal activity to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation,” according to the station.
But these bills were not enough for Pearson and all the anti-gun zealots in the gallery who attended the session to protest.
The zealots can be heard below loudly chanting during the session:
Members were forced to yell over the noise to conduct routine business tonight. This is exactly why rules are imperative. @TNDemocrats claim to want to “do something” yet, continue to prove they’re only interested in making demands, name-calling and photo ops. The real work is… pic.twitter.com/LPVxI3sbas
— TN House Republicans (@tnhousegop) August 29, 2023
Among the zealots was Sarah Shoop Neumann, the mother of a student at the school where transgender Aiden Hale opened fire in March, killing six people.
“We held a special session following the tragedy of a mass shooting at The Covenant School and yet we took no meaningful action,” she complained to local station WTVF after Tuesday’s special session.
“We’re not just talking about traffic lights and a football stadium. These are all of our kids’ lives. It’s got to change. The atmosphere has got to change, and we’ll work toward that. We’ll take down the names of those who don’t deserve a seat here and make sure we replace them with someone who wants to be here with the right motivations,” she added.
“Our elected representatives have done nothing. Our state has done nothing to make you safer or to prevent this from happening again,” Mary Katherine Joyce, the mother of another student, said.
Writers and editors can be contacted at [email protected] with feedback, tips, or corrections.
V. Saxena is a staff writer with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University. Saxena also contributes to BizPac Review.
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