Tennessee Republicans on Tuesday ended a special session of the state legislature devoted to public safety without enacting new restrictions on access to firearms, ending an emotional and chaotic week punctuated by tearful pleas from parents whose children survived a mass shooting at a Nashville Christian school.
The special session, ordered by Governor Bill Lee, a Republican, over objections within his own party, had ostensibly been an opportunity for lawmakers to help prevent a repeat of the violence at Covenant School, where three students and three adults were arrested. killed. .
But it instead provided a bitter epilogue to the vicious final weeks of the April regular session, in which the Republican supermajority ignored thousands of protesters calling for modest gun control, then expelled two black Democrats from the House of Representatives for leading a protest.
The special session concluded with a heated scuffle on the floor of the House of Representatives as those two Democrats — Representatives Justin Jones and Justin J. Pearson — confronted Speaker Cameron Sexton as he began to leave the room. Mr Pearson and Mr Sexton clashed in the crowd, and tempers flared as lawmakers leveled allegations of deliberate shoving.
“I don’t care what political side you’re on,” Mary Joyce, a Covenant parent, said after the legislature was adjourned, her voice raw with tears and anger. “These are our children.”
Republicans in the House of Representatives had begun the special session pushing through new rules of conduct that would allow them to silence any member deemed to have repeatedly spoken out of turn or off topic. On Monday, that line was used to silence Mr Jones, sparking outrage.
The Republicans also introduced a ban on signs – already limited to the size of a sheet of printer paper – which resulted in a few women being escorted out for holding signs. The women sued under the First Amendment, and a Nashville court overturned the ban.
The crackdown on dissent further heightened tensions over the special session, which Democrats had denounced as inadequate and conservative Republicans had opposed as a possible violation of gun owners’ constitutional rights.
And it left a core group of Covenant School parents — speaking for themselves, their children, and the parents of the three 9-year-olds who were killed — spend day after day publicly reliving the trauma of the attack.
Mr Lee, who lost two family friends in the shooting, had called for a protection law that would temporarily allow the confiscation of firearms from those deemed by the court to be a threat to themselves or others. Democrats and pundits had pushed for much tougher legislation, while parents braced for only modest success.
But Senate Republicans quickly brushed aside all but a few bills. They let committees go in and out within minutes, with little debate, and refused to pass most legislation.
While Republicans in the House of Representatives were willing to consider more legislation, they ignored all proposals for gun restrictions and focused on other mental health bills and an effort to tighten sentences for juvenile delinquency.
And both chambers rejected Democrats’ calls to address gun violence, the leading cause of death for children in the United States.
“I think it’s good to remember that Tennessee isn’t just Nashville, Tennessee isn’t just Memphis,” said State Representative Jeremy Faison, a member of the Republican leadership of the House of Representatives. He added: “There is literally no one in my district asking me to do anything like what they asked.”
Finally, after barely six days of work, the legislature sent Mr. Lee just a few policy bills, some of which codified existing Tennessee policies, including measures that would require the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to produce a comprehensive report on human trafficking, ensure faster updates to state background checks and provide incentives for the safe storage of guns at home. They also passed a funding bill to bolster some mental health and safety resources.
“We must recognize the importance of this special session – we have made progress on public safety issues,” Mr Lee told reporters. “And we have initiated a public safety conversation that will continue into the future.”
Lieutenant Governor Randy McNally defended the session as a success, saying “these things take time” and more work could be done when the legislature returned in January.
The session began last week as the deep divide over guns became apparent. Protesters wearing orange and red associated with gun control advocacy converged on the legislature. Gun rights groups also showed up, as did a handful of far-right Proud Boys, their faces mostly cloaked as they argued with protesters.
Whenever a rally ended with no action on gun control, protesters erupted in screams, warned Republicans of primary challengers, and cried through tears about their anger, sadness, and disappointment. The temporary ban on signs led several people to scribble slogans on their arms, hands and clothes, or hold their phones high to display flashy phrases.
But because the legislature was unwilling to consider the tougher proposals they had been lobbying for all summer, the Covenant parents quietly shifted the focus of their decision.
An unexpectedly difficult victory was for a pair of mothers, who sobbed for the chance to be heard, to testify about their community’s experiences — an opportunity that was jeopardized at least twice after Republicans cleared the room or tried to. interrupt debate. (At least one legislator later apologized.)
Then the women described what had happened at Covenant on March 27. How teachers, with trembling hands, barely had time to lock the classroom doors. How a teacher persuaded a kindergarten class to race, as a way to make running in safety look like a game. How William Kinney, 9, a proud line leader, had led his class through what they thought was a fire drill, only to get caught up in the gunfire that set off the alarm.
Putting aside ambitions for stricter gun control until the regular session in January, the parents pushed for legislation to be passed that, after what happened to third grade, would help develop new practices for distinguishing between a fire drill and an unexpected emergency fire alarm.
They also pushed for a measure that would exempt the autopsies and medical examiners’ reports of children killed in homicides from the law on public records without parental consent.
But despite opposition from the senators, both measures failed to break through the legislature. As the session dragged on, the parents grew increasingly frustrated and angry, rallying behind an impromptu pledge to “get lawmakers used to seeing these faces” by returning to the legislature over and over again.
But on Tuesday, several mothers burst into tears of exhaustion and anger as there was little to show after their weeks of lobbying and work activities. Before a closed House in the House of Representatives, they gathered with Mr. Pearson and other Democrats and prayed—for strength and for love.
