‘Tennessee Three’ State Rep. Slams Mike Johnson’s ‘Insulting’ Excuse For Mass Shootings

Tennessee state Rep. Justin Jones (D) scorched newly-elected Home Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) for pointing to “the human coronary heart “as “the issue” in mass shootings within the wake of the Maine bloodbath that killed 18 folks final week.

Jones, a “Tennessee Three” member who joined protesters calling for stricter gun management earlier than Republicans expelled him from the state’s Home in April, reacted to a clip of Johnson telling Fox Information’ Sean Hannity that weapons aren’t the issue and “we have now to guard the proper of the residents to guard themselves.”

“I need to let Speaker Johnson know that in my religion custom, once you put objects above folks, we name that idolatry. And once you put the lives of individuals beneath cash and marketing campaign contributions, we name that idolatry,” Jones advised MSNBC’s Jen Psaki in a plea for “frequent sense gun legal guidelines” on Sunday.

“And so let’s not use religion and false ideas and prayers to gloss over this situation.”

Jones continued his response to Johnson, who supplied his prayers in response to the Maine bloodbath, by calling on lawmakers to hope with their “toes and fingers and signing laws.”

He went on to quote mass shootings at Nashville’s Covenant Faculty, the place three kids and three adults have been killed in March, and one other in 2018 that left 4 folks useless at a Waffle Home within the metropolis’s Antioch neighborhood.

Jones known as Johnson’s feedback “insulting to grieving communities” to try to “use religiosity” to dismiss others’ ache till the subsequent mass capturing.

The lethal assault in Maine final week is amongst 580 mass shootings in America this yr, based on the Gun Violence Archive. Over 35,700 folks have been killed because of gun violence in America this yr.

“And so I hope that Speaker Johnson doesn’t wait till a mass capturing hits his group act. However I hope that he acts based on not a difficulty of left or proper however acknowledges that this situation of gun violence is an ethical situation of proper and mistaken and historical past will watch the place he stands on this time,” Jones stated.

“Historical past will choose him, his kids will choose him and future generations will choose him as a result of we’re sick and uninterested in residing on this world of preventable mass demise due to an excessive minority which have hijacked our democracy.”