Thursday on MS NOW’s “The 11th Hour,” Democratic candidate for Tennessee’s 9th congressional district Justin Pearson said that elected officals who offer thoughts and prayers about the shooting at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon are not sincere.
Pearson said, “I’ve been fighting to end the gun violence epidemic for years, having lost my classmate, my mentor, my cousin to gun violence. And even a few years ago, I got expelled out of the State House because we were standing up after a mass shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville. This doesn’t have to be our reality, and the fact that it is, is really a failure of people in positions of power.”
He added, “I mean, you’re going to see a lot of elected officials who offer thoughts and prayers and try and convince us that there’s some sincerity to it, but when you’re in an elected position, the opportunity is really in your hands to do something to make sure that people don’t have access to firearms, who should not have it, that people get simple training before they’re even able to purchase a firearm. And that’s an issue that Republicans, Democrats and independents alike agree upon. But we’ve allowed the infusion of the NRA and their affiliates to really impact our politics in such a way that it has crippled us and our ability to address one of the leading causes of death for children under the age of 18 in the state of Tennessee, but also across the country, which is a gun injury.”
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