(VitalNews.org) – The Tennessee Democratic Representative, with a penchant for theatrics, was not allowed to stage another set piece on the legislative floor on April 17 when the Sergeant at Arms said ‘no.’
Rep. Justin Jones, who was recently expelled from the legislature before being sent back by a local commission in his district, tried to bring a baby-sized coffin onto the legislative floor. He participated in a political demonstration about gun control organized by Bishop William Barber “II” of the Protestant Disciples of Christ church.
Barber also uses a theatrical approach to politics; he demanded that lawmakers stop “committing policy murder.”
Attendees held child-sized caskets to symbolize children they characterize as killed “by guns,” rather than by the people who shot the guns.
Jones was one of three Democratic Tennessee lawmakers who recently took over the legislative chamber to disrupt the proceedings. Along with colleague Rep. Justin Pearson, Jones screamed into a bullhorn about gun control before being removed along with protest participants.
The legislature then expelled Jones and Pearson. A quirk of Tennessee law allowed local commissions in the lawmakers’ district to send them back to the House, pending a scheduled special election 60 days from their re-entrance.
A third Democrat who participated in the original bullhorn incident, Gloria Johnson, was not expelled. Jones, Pearson, and their allies claimed that Johnson only kept her seat because she was white and that Pearson and Jones were only expelled because they are black. However, Johnson did not yell into a bullhorn in the same disruptive manner.
Undaunted, the zoot-suited Justin Jones posed for whirring cameras with the gold-toned child coffin before attempting to bring it to the House floor. When he did, the Sergeant at Arms prevented it.
Calls for “gun control” have ramped up in Tennessee after the March 27 shooting at Covenant School. The shooter, a 28-year-old woman calling herself transgender, was a former student. She killed three children and three adults.
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