Odd as it may sound, I’d like to thank the Republican members of the Tennessee House of Representatives.
Those GOP lawmakers — our GOP lawmakers — voted Thursday to expel two of three Democratic lawmakers from the chamber because the three dared to voice the concerns of most Tennesseans. Tennesseans (including Republicans) have consistently in recent years told pollsters they approved of tougher, not weaker, gun safety laws. This even as Tennessee lawmakers continued to loosen our gun laws and as the number of tragic shootings rose.
Our GOP representatives are being led by the petty and retaliatory House Speaker Cameron Sexton, whose favorite method of controlling the roughly two fistfuls of Democrats in the House has been simply to refuse to let them speak. He has accomplished that either by not calling on them or by just cutting off their microphones. Neat trick.
The upshot is that the Volunteer State GOP is clearly afraid of the growing number of us who no longer think being spun up by so-called patriot talk about the Second Amendment should overshadow the deaths of children, teachers or frankly everyone else caught in the crosshairs of war weapons sold at fat profit by the gun industry.
Yes, that would be Tennessee’s growing gun industry. Republican Gov. Bill Lee told us not long ago that we’re No. 1 in the country for gun manufacturing, you know.