Former Alabama Sen. Doug Jones voiced his anger over the expulsions of two of three Democratic state lawmakers from the Tennessee Legislature for their roles in protesting gun violence days after a deadly school shooting, calling the action “a dark day for democracy.”

Jones used an expletive to describe the expulsions of Tennessee state Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson on Thursday, referring to the incident as “the bullshit that went down in Nashville.”

“What you saw was just a complete and full-on assault of democracy, the likes of which we haven’t seen since Jan. 6,” the former U.S. senator from Alabama said in a video posted to his Twitter account.

Jones attributed the expulsions of Jones and Pearson to the Republican supermajority in the Tennessee House and because the GOP “can’t put forth policies” that address issues like gun violence.

“This supermajority can expel three Democrats for standing up, speaking out and causing a little good trouble just like John Lewis said we should always be doing,” Jones said, referring to the late Alabama-born civil rights leader and U.S. senator from Georgia.

A third Democratic lawmaker, Rep. Gloria Johnson, survived an expulsion vote. Johnson is white, and said she believed she was not expelled because of her skin color; Jones and Pearson are Black.

Jones said the vote “had a racial overtone.”

“She is also a white female. She survived the vote. The two young Black males did not survive their votes and were expelled. You figure it out folks,” Jones said. “It is easy.”

The three Tennessee Democrats joined demonstrators on the House floor to rail against gun violence after the deadly shooting at a Christian school in Nashville that left six people dead, including three children.

While demonstrators filled galleries in the chamber, the three Democrats approached the front of the chamber with a bullhorn and participated in a chant.

“All this bullshit that happened in Nashville today started … with the gun deaths, the violent gun deaths of three children and three adults in Nashville, at a school, at a private school,” Jones said in the video.

“Today is a really dark day for democracy,” he said. “We don’t need to get too down about it, we need to get organized.”

The former senator said he was outraged over the speaker of the Tennessee House likening the protestors to the Jan. 6 insurrectionists.

“Give me a damn break, give me a break, people,” he said. “They weren’t trying to overturn an election, they were simply trying to [tell lawmakers] to do your damn jobs, to save peoples’ lives.”