Rep. Justin J. Pearson, a candidate for Tennessee’s 9th Congressional district, frames his push for gun-safety action as part of a longer American tradition of dissent—highlighting a 2023 rally at the Tennessee State Capitol and subsequent political backlash t
Rep. Justin J. Pearson points to a moment after a massacre in Tennessee in 2023—when thousands of young people poured into the Tennessee State Capitol asking for gun safety action—and says the lesson wasn’t only what they demanded, but what happened when lawmakers refused to listen.
After a mass shooting in his home state of Tennessee in 2023. 7. 000 protestors came to the Tennessee State Capitol to demand action. Pearson says the majority were students under the age of 18. “begged. shouted. cried. and sang” about the need for gun safety. He describes what followed inside the chamber: many of his fellow legislators “mocked. laughed at. and ignored them” as students walked into the House chamber.
Then. Pearson says. he and two colleagues took a different route—when the Speaker of the House refused to hear the demonstrators. Pearson writes that he and two colleagues went to the well of the House floor. halted business as usual proceedings. and demanded they listen. The protest was peaceful. but its outcome was not gentle: Pearson says it led to the expulsion of the two youngest Black lawmakers in the state.
Still, he ties that confrontation to a concrete policy shift beyond the Capitol. Pearson adds that the episode prompted Tennessee’s Republican governor to sign an executive order that strengthened background checks and “breathed new life into the national discussion about gun violence in America.”
The story Pearson tells is built on a contradiction he says America keeps repeating: protesters are treated as criminals when their demands challenge power. even when those demands are rooted in protection and basic rights. He writes that protesters of the past are often celebrated as heroes while protesters of today are “vilified. pepper-sprayed. and shot. ” and he says he has witnessed elected officials trying to “crush and dismantle peaceful dissent.”.
His argument is not limited to one flashpoint. Pearson compares the current moment to earlier movements—describing enslaved ancestors who. during the Civil War. fought for the Union against white supremacy. and he says that helped move America closer to its ideals. He also recalls the Civil Rights Movement march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. Alabama. where he says protesters were bludgeoned. pushing the nation to “reckon with its separate and unequal democracy.” Pearson writes that later mass protests after modern-day lynchings—including Breonna Taylor and George Floyd—forced the country to confront the gap between what it professes and what it practices.
He then connects that history to what he calls backlash that follows resistance. Pearson writes that harsh retaliation has always followed efforts to push back against injustice—listing retribution in the South. “Red Summer. ” lynchings. assassinations. mass incarceration. and the rise of white Christian nationalism. He points to attacks on diversity. equity. and inclusion. the firing of qualified four-star generals. blaming Black women. and villainizing immigrants as symptoms of “vitriol and hate” in American politics.
Pearson ends on a direct question about whether the backlash will stop people from taking action. “We must answer this simple question: Will we let it stop us?” he writes. adding that for 250 years—by his account—“Angelic Dissenters” have fought the status quo and endured repeated cycles of construction. destruction. and reconstruction of the democratic republic. He argues that the country can have “250 more and better years” if people recognize that those who carry the fundamental promise of the nation are why it has reached this far.
Rep. Justin J. Pearson is a candidate running to represent Tennessee’s 9th Congressional district.
Justin J. Pearson Tennessee 9th Congressional district gun safety background checks protest Tennessee State Capitol Speaker of the House executive order civil rights Edmund Pettus Bridge