Rep. Daryl Metcalfe complains online about 'students' urging gun control
Four quotation marks raise a lot of questions about a Pennsylvania state representative's thoughts on the young people galvanized by the Parkland, Fla., school shooting that killed 17 people last week.
"This morning I was working out and listening to the news about 'students' being bused in to the Florida Capitol," Cranberry Republican Rep. Daryl Metcalfe posted to Facebook Tuesday morning. "They expect lawmakers to listen to the policy advice of 18-year-old and younger 'students' who are advocating for gun control, but they do not believe 18-year-olds who are old enough to serve on the battlefields of Afghanistan are old enough to purchase a rifle."
Metcalfe did not respond to a request for clarification on what he meant by those quotation marks.
But the implication that the teenagers who have appeared in the media and at the legislative session in Tallahassee were not actually students fit with an effort from some "conspiracists" to paint the protesters as coached, paid to speak out, or even "crisis actors" who appear in mass shootings in an effort to stir emotions and undermine gun rights.
David Hogg, one of the acting students recruited by the same minds behind the anti-Trump Women's March, is having trouble reciting his lines: pic.twitter.com/D6dolHEJVT
" Lucian B. Wintrich (@lucianwintrich) February 21, 2018
"I'm not a crisis actor, I'm someone who had to witness this and live through this and I continue to be having to do that" https://t.co/6RdnYUXswN
" New York Post (@nypost) February 21, 2018
Benjamin Kelly, an aide to Florida State Rep. Shawn Harrison, apparently was fired Tuesday after emailing a reporter a claim that two survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting were actors.
Metcalfe's post drew angry rebukes from his constituents.
"Let's just stop with 'students,'" wrote Facebook user Maureen Owens Byko, who the website identified as a constituent in Metcalfe's district. "Are you a denier? Are you accusing them of not being students?"
"Because so many of us are unclear on our representative's intent with this statement I urge us all to call him and ask. Right now. All day," she wrote in a separate comment.
"Those students have voices and are the future of our country, they not only deserve to be heard but also respected and not mocked by you!" commented user Katie Zibert.
Metcalfe has been no stranger to controversy — he rebuked a Harrisburg colleague for touching his arm by saying he was heterosexual and that the colleague should look to Democrats if he wanted to touch someone — and has embraced conspiratorial theories surrounding the Second Amendment before.
A flyer on his website for an April 30 gun-rights rally in Harrisburg says Gov. Tom Wolf's declaration of a statewide emergency over the opioid crisis "criminalizes the open carrying of any firearm," citing a section of the state Crimes Code that says "no person shall carry a firearm upon any public streets or public property during an emergency proclaimed by a state or municipal governmental executive."
Republican State Sen. Scott Wagner, seeking to run against Wolf in the November election, first raised the issue of the emergency declaration in January, but Wolf spokesman J.J. Abbott said the declaration had no effect on gun rights, and noted that disasters were declared before in response to severe weather with no impact on guns.
In Pittsburgh, about 100 students from the Creative and Performing Arts High School Downtown staged a walkout Wednesday afternoon in response to the Florida shooting, marching to Market Square and linking hands for 17 minutes to honor the 17 dead.
Other students from high schools and colleges in the Pittsburgh area are planning to protest in solidarity March 24.
Matthew Santoni is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at 724 836 6660, msantoni@tribweb.com or on Twitter @msantoni.
