Republicans in the Tennessee legislature reached a new political low on Thursday with their decision to expel two Black members for having participated in an anti-gun protest following the March 27 deaths of three children and three adults in a Nashville Christian school mass shooting. As if blind to the racial implications, lawmakers voted narrowly to let a white House member keep her seat after she participated in the same protest. Tennesseeans are holding high-profile protests to put much-needed pressure on lawmakers to stop sidestepping the significance of school mass shootings.

Apparently, the protests inside the Tennessee House chamber hit a nerve. Referring to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection in Washington, state Republican House Speaker Cameron Sexton went so far as to say the protest "was equivalent, at least equivalent, maybe worse depending on how you look at it, of doing an insurrection in the Capitol."

There is no question that the nonviolent protest March 30 by the so-called "Tennessee Three" — Democratic state Reps. Justin Pearson, Justin Jones and Gloria Johnson — disrupted House proceedings as they chanted, "No action, no peace." But it didn't even slightly resemble the bloodshed, destruction and democracy-threatening chaos of Jan. 6, when hundreds of pro-Donald Trump protesters swarmed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to block confirmation of the 2020 presidential election result. It boggles the mind how Sexton reached his "maybe worse" comparison.

Pearson and Jones absolutely revved up the crowd of protesters, using a megaphone and seizing the House lectern to demand gun-control legislation out of frustration at inaction following one school shooting after another. Johnson participated in chants but didn't use the megaphone, which might have led some Republicans to vote against expelling her.

"We don't want to be up here, but we have no choice but to find a way ... to disrupt business as normal," Pearson told the crowd, "because business as normal is our children dying."

Republican reaction to mass shootings, including those involving small children, has become easily predictable, as if recited from a National Rifle Association boilerplate script: First, hearts go out to the victims and their families. Oh-so-sincere thoughts and prayers. But remember that guns don't kill people. Don't forget the Second Amendment! What's really needed is greater attention to mental health, not more gun restrictions.

That's precisely the "business as normal" that Pearson was talking about. Did the protesters go too far in seizing the House chamber? Probably. But the only two previous expulsions from the Tennessee legislature since the Civil War were for blatant offenses involving sexual misconduct and bribe-taking. Pearson and Jones were merely judged by their colleagues to have brought "disorder and dishonor" on the House.

But in these hyper-partisan times, when Republicans seem desperate to make anything and everything look worse than the Capitol insurrection, that's apparently enough.

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