Cheney Orr/Reuters
The grieving parents of children who were massacred at The Covenant School in March or whose children were forced to hide as the shooter smashed their way through were among dozens of spectators that were booted out of a Tennessee subcommittee meeting about a new law that would allow for more guns on school campuses.
The chaotic scene was compounded by parents bursting into tears as troopers from the Tennessee Highway Patrol forced them out of the same meeting they’d been called to testify in, according to reports from the Tennessee State Capitol in Nashville.
Lowell Russell, a Republican state representative that oversaw the meeting, justified the mass ejection by claiming that spectators had continued clapping, yelling, and holding signs after being ordered to stop.