The 'evils' that Tennessee Republicans will and won't address
They won't crack down on guns. But they will expel gun protesters.
A terrible thing, these gun massacres. We’re not a country that can agree on much, but we can agree that the routine slaughters evil. There’s not a partisan split about whether the darkest and most fearsome impulses of humanity reveal themselves when somebody walks into a church or a grocery store or a school and destroys the lives and bodies of innocent people.
We should all tremble before such monstrosity.
But we shouldn’t just tremble. We should work to repel it, right? To contain it? To limit that damage?
Well. Maybe not.
Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., on Tuesday doubled down on his comments that Congress is "not gonna fix" the problem of school shootings, saying that the country needed a "real revival" rather than gun control legislation.
Earlier this week, a shooter attacked The Covenant School in Nashville, killing six people, including three children. In the aftermath of the rampage, the third school shooting in the country this year, lawmakers returned to their well-trodden positions in responding to gun violence. Democrats called for stricter gun control legislation, with President Joe Biden urging Congress to pass an assault weapons ban. Some Republicans shifted the blame away from guns, instead pointing to the shooter's gender identity and mental illness.
“If you want to legislate evil, it’s just not going to happen,” Burchett said. "We need a real revival in this country. Let’s call on our Christian ministers and our people of faith.”
I thought about that helplessness last night, when the Tennessee Legislature that finds the problem of guns to big and mysterious and ineffable to address decided that it could do something … about gun protesters.
Two Democratic lawmakers have been ousted from the Republican-controlled Tennessee state House of Representatives and one was allowed to stay in what marks the first partisan expulsion in the state's modern history.
The three lawmakers -- State Reps. Justin Jones and Justin J. Pearson, who were expelled, and Rep. Gloria Johnson -- faced separate expulsion hearings Thursday for allegedly violating the chamber's rules of decorum by participating in a gun control protest at the state Capitol last week.
Jones and Pearson, the expelled lawmakers, are Black. Johnson is not. You can draw your own conclusions and they’re probably correct.
In fact, the Tennessee Legislature is pretty good at cracking down on lots of things it finds objectionable.
This week, Tennessee was set to become the first state to enforce wide-ranging restrictions on drag performances while nearly a dozen other states consider similar bills, before a federal judge temporarily blocked the law.
Since 2015, Tennessee has enacted at least 13 laws that restrict LGBTQ rights — the most in the nation in that time frame, according to a Washington Post analysis of data from two groups that track such legislation. Georgia and Arkansas enacted at least nine similar laws in the same time frame, followed by Alabama with six laws.
So I guess I don’t really believe Tim Burchett.
It’s not that lawmakers can’t so something about the stuff they find horrendous. It’s just that they find some stuff horrendous … and other stuff, like an endless string of gun massacres, less so. Maybe that’s unfair, so let’s rephrase: They simply don’t find gun massacres — even one in their midst — awful enough to do something.
They have other priorities. And somehow, those priorities don’t really involve protecting the weakest among us.
Elsewhere…
Some of my former colleagues at The Week have started a new climate-centric news site, Heatmap.News, and it’s anything but dry and alarmist. There’s cultural coverage, and some news-you-can-use stuff. And they’ve invited me to play in their sandbox now and again. Today, my first piece: It’s about how home prices in the American West are taking a nosedive. It’s not necessarily climate-related — or at least, not just so — but climate is definitely taking a toll:
What seems clear is that Western homeowners are challenged by the warming environment. A lot of media attention about climate change and real estate has focused on coastal properties, where communities struggle with protecting — or even moving — beachfront properties that find themselves in the path of rising oceans. One recent study found that American homes are overvalued by as much as $237 billion due to unacknowledged flood risks due to climate factors.
But the drought is also taking its toll on current and prospective homeowners who live a long way from the oceans and rivers.
The 2020 California wildfires destroyed more than 11,000 structures in the state, turning residents into de facto climate refugees and putting renewed strains on the Golden State’s insurance industry. In places like Arizona, drought and climate change are putting pressure on builders who are having difficulty finding enough water to supply the giant new housing developments they want to put up in the desert.
If that’s the kind of thing that interests you, please give my friends at Heatmap your support!