The Vice President of the United States Kamala Harris flew to Nashville where she gave a passionate speech in support of gun control and visited with two state representatives who had been dismissed from the General Assembly for demonstrating on the floor of the state House.
In her speech in the Fisk University chapel, Harris stated, “Let’s not fall for the false choice, which suggests that you’re either in favor of the Second Amendment or you want reasonable gun safety laws, we can and should do both.”
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She said, referring to a horrific massacre that ravaged a Nashville school last month: “The underlying issue is one that we are witnessing, over and over again, this community experienced it firsthand just 11 days ago.”
VP Harris met privately with former Black Democratic representatives Justin Jones and Justin Pearson from Tennessee, both of whom were driven out of the legislature the day before for supporting gun control protests, as well as the entire Democratic Tennessee state caucus. The White woman Rep. Gloria Johnson, who was pardoned in the Republican-backed ouster, which the group criticized as authoritarian, vengeful, and racially motivated, was present at the meeting.
The three parliamentarians who were up for expulsion were praised by the vice president because they decided to lead and demonstrate bravery.
She continued, “And they understood the importance, these three, of standing to say the people will not be silenced, to say that a democracy hears the cries, hears the pleas, who hear the demands of its people who say that children should be able to live and be safe and go to school and not be in fear.”
A White House official told CNN that one of the goals of the trip was to demonstrate the administration’s sincerity about democracy, and Harris took the occasion to do just that.
“We understand when we took an oath to represent the people who elected us that we speak on behalf of them,” she explained. “It wasn’t about the three of these leaders. It was about who they were representing. it’s about whose voices they were channeling. Understand that – and is that not what democracy allows?”
The sudden travel demonstrates the importance that the Biden administration attaches to both this problem and gun regulation. Prior to this, Harris had no planned public activities on that day.
According to a recent readout by the administration, President Joe Biden met with the three Tennessee lawmakers to express his gratitude for their “leadership in seeking to ban assault weapons and standing up for our democratic values.” He also extended an invitation to all three to visit the White House.
Biden chastised Republicans for not acting more forcefully on gun control in a recent statement, calling the expulsion of the two legislators from the state’s House of Representatives “shocking, undemocratic, and without precedent.”
He added, “Rather than debating the merits of the issue, these Republican lawmakers have chosen to punish, silence, and expel duly-elected representatives of the people of Tennessee.”
He concluded, “A strong majority of Americans want lawmakers to act on commonsense gun safety reforms that we know will save lives. But instead, we’ve continued to see Republican officials across America double down on dangerous bills that make our schools, places of worship, and communities less safe.”
