House Dems In Overnight Sit-In To Protest Lack Of Action on Gun Control

Overriding Speaker Paul Ryan, House Democrats continued to occupy the chamber tonight in a mass sit-in to protest the lack of action on gun control. Many held signs of the victims of the June 12th attack at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. Some sang "We Shall Overcome," to the consternation of furious Republicans who earlier forced cameras out of the chamber and attempted to cut the WiFi in effort to black coverage of the action. In response, Democrats resorted to Twitter's Periscope feature in order to broadcast the revolt.

"After Orlando we realize that as members we can not go back to business as usual," said Donna Edwards, congresswoman for Maryland. "If the speaker is upset that we disrupted the floor, we take our leadership from John Lewis who tells us that it's important for us to be disruptive. We're not going back to the regular business of the House until we can do something about gun control."

John Lewis, a congressman for Georgia and a 1960s civil rights activist, said, "We're going to continue to sit in and sit down. By sitting in and sitting down, we're standing up."