22 June 2016•Update: 23 June 2016
By Kasim Ileri
WASHINGTON
Dozens of Democrats in the House of Representatives are staging a "sit-in" on the floor of the chamber, demanding to be allowed to vote on a gun control bill.
Approximately 30 Democrats joined the action led by Georgia Rep. John Lewis, according to media reports. The House was not in session at the time.
By the afternoon, the number of the lawmakers joining the protest grew to nearly 100.
“My colleagues & I have had enough. We are sitting-in on the House Floor until we get a vote to address gun violence,” tweeted Lewis, a civil rights leader who in the 1960s organized hundreds of sit-ins in the fight for desegregation.
The move comes a little more than a week after a massacre at an Orlando, Florida, nightclub that left 49 victims dead and 53 others wounded.
The sit-in is part of an effort by Democrats to prevent individuals who are on the U.S. no-fly list from purchasing firearms.
“We are calling for the simple dignity of a vote,” said Rep. John Larson of Connecticut, referring to a House measure to block gun purchases by suspected terrorists.
"Rise up Democrats, rise up Americans. We will occupy this chamber," Larson tweeted. "We will no longer be denied a right to vote."
Larson’s state experienced one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history when 20 school children were killed, along with six adults at an elementary school in 2012.
Republican leaders ordered broadcast television cameras of the chamber turned off, according to media reports.
President Barack Obama tweeted in support of the sit-in in response to a tweet from Lewis.
“Thank you John Lewis for leading on gun violence where we need it most,” Obama wrote after Lewis tweeted: “Sometimes you have to get in the way. You have to make some noise by speaking up and speaking out against injustice & inaction #goodtrouble”
The demonstration was “an extraordinary step to change the status quo,” according to the White House.
“I think they are showing the kind of frustration and even anger that people around the country have about the inability of the Republican-led Congress to take common-sense steps that would protect the American people,” spokesman Josh Earnest said, adding that what the Democrats are asking for is neither radical nor controversial.
“These are common-sense proposals … that would, in fact, succeed in at least making it harder for individuals who shouldn't have guns from being able to get their hands on them,” he said.
