President Biden on Monday welcomed Tennessee Democratic Representatives Justin Pearson, Justin Jones and Gloria Johnson to the White House for a discussion on gun reform. The lawmakers became known as the “Tennessee Three” after facing Republican-led expulsion votes from the state Legislature for supporting recent student protests calling for gun control after six people, including three 9-year-old students, were killed in a mass shooting at a Nashville elementary school in March. Pearson and Jones, who were the only two formally expelled, were unanimously reappointed to the Tennessee House of Representatives by local officials in Memphis and Nashville earlier this month. This is Jones speaking Monday from the Rose Garden.

Rep. Justin Jones: “We lifted this issue above the partisan divide, that this is not left or right, but we talked to the president about how this is a moral issue, an issue of conscience, an issue in the South, where we are trying to build a multiracial democracy and challenge these extreme forces that rather than passing an assault weapons ban, they assaulted our democracy, as we saw when we were expelled from the state Legislature.”