WATCH: Student Protesters Rally Inside Tennessee State Capitol Demanding Gun Control
Protesters marched on the Tennessee State Capitol on Thursday morning demanding lawmakers take action on gun control following the horrific Nashville elementary school shooting on Monday, which left three children and three adults dead.
Kelsey Gibbs of Nashville’s NewsChannel 5 reported from the Capitol. “This was a peaceful protest. I was there and know of no one getting arrested. These students were at the Capitol to lobby for gun control. It was a packed a rotunda. Troopers had to make pathways for lawmakers to go to the restroom,” Gibbs wrote on Twitter sharing a clip from the protest.
The Tennessean reported on the protest in the Capitol rotunda, writing that one protester could be heard saying, “Red flag laws! One thing you can do, representative. One thing you can do.”
“Do something!” the crowd chanted.
“This is what democracy looks like,” “protect our kids,” and “ban assault weapons,” were other chants and calls the Tennessean’s reporter heard while covering the event.
Gibbs posted a video on Twitter of the crowded rotunda and state troopers pulling one student from the crowd before releasing him.
MSNBC’s Lindsey Reiser reported live from the Tennessee State Capitol on Thursday morning during the protest and noted the crowd was made up of “a lot of parents” and “a lot of people bringing their young kids, a lot of students here.”
“In fact, one lawmaker inside tells me a lot of students who are trying to watch the proceedings today, the General Assembly from the gallery were prohibited from doing so. So a lot of them perhaps left and went back to class because of that. But we know that they’re demanding change,” Reiser added.
“The woman who organized this, she’s a single mom and she said she was called to action after seeing what happened on Monday. This is some of what she told me: ‘We have to do everything. We can’t sleep at night. I can’t even drop my kids. Look at these kids. We want them to go to school,’” the report added, showing footage of the organizer.
“The House galleries were cleared of protesters as of about 11:30 a.m., and a five-minute recess took longer. It took about 50 minutes for remaining protesters to leave the Capitol rotunda. At one point, protesters in the rotunda silently held up six fingers, representing the six victims killed in Monday’s shooting,” added the Tennessean.
Many on the right immediately took to Twitter to compare the gun reform protest to the Jan. 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“Is there an insurrection happening in Tennessee? Will these kids be thrown into a gulag? Will the FBI arrest hundreds of people in a dragnet? Will we have a special committee on this?” wrote pro-Trump organizer Charlie Kirk on Twitter, sharing a video from Gibbs from inside the rotunda. Gibbs deleted the video on Thursday afternoon as it went viral on the right, later reposting it with additional context.
“I deleted the last tweet because I wasn’t as clear. This was a peaceful protest. Students, parents and their supporters went through Capitol security to lobby for gun control in the Capitol. No one was arrested. This shoving started when THP needed to make way for lawmakers,” Gibbs wrote.
Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX) also shared the video and wrote, “The current scene inside the Tennessee State Capitol building. Will the Left call this an insurrection too?”
Notably, as of the time this article was published there were no reports of protesters attacking law enforcement or any property damage.
Watch above via MSNBC.
