Escambia County Commissioner Doug Underhill took to Facebook on Saturday morning to announce his disapproval of the March for Our Lives teens.
He wrote, “Good morning to all you marchers. You are wrong. My gun is not your problem, and my rights are not your business. Your fears and your hate are a very real danger to our Constitution. You are literally spending your Saturday demanding the government take away your rights. Pathetic.”
The March of Our Lives occurred all over the nation as a call to action for gun reforms. Included in the local marchers was Elyssa Goldman, who was the camp counselor for Alyssa Alhadeff, age 14, one of the 17 victims of the Parkland shooting.
“I went to a 14-year-old’s funeral,” Goldman told Inweekly. Read “The Kids are Right.”
Saturday night, Clark Partington attorney Scott Remington shared a news story that featured Emma Gonzalez, a Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School senior.
Underhill commented, “Pathetically misled children. Teach them civics….and take them to the range and teach them how to exercise their Constitutional RESPONSIBILITY to be armed, trained, and disciplined.”
The commissioner wasn’t finished. Sunday morning shared a meme by The Wilkow Majority that attacked Gonzalez for wearing a Cuban flag on her jacket.
“Isn’t she a cute little insurgent!” wrote Underhill.
When someone defended her right to express her opinion under the First Amendment, Underhill wrote, “And I am free to call her an uninformed miscreant and threat to our nation.”
Emma Gonzalez’s parents fled Communist Cuba in 1968. Her mother is a math tutor and her father is a cybersecurity attorney.
Underhill is pathetic.
Natalie, it’s obvious, even to a casual observer like yourself, a number of folks funded the travel for many that participated in the D.C. march. Someone wanted to bring more attention to their gun control agenda.
The NRA, (I am not a member) is just another lobbying group, representing issues and concerns of gun owners and gun manufacturers. There’s no need to fear them anymore than lobbies representing land developers, colleges, Planned Parenthood, fishermen, atheists, Muslims, Christians, Jews, textbook publishers, teachers, banks, pharmacy, oil, automotive and insurance companies. Lobbies don’t make our laws, it is the politicians taking their money that do.
We don’t share the same worldview, and that is okay with me.
We’re going to bury you this coming November in the voting booth. Get ready. I am 71, a proud Democrat living in a Red state and we and all these misled youth are going to flip Florida. GET READY BECAUSE WE ARE COMING I marched Saturday with those proud high schoolers in Gulf Breeze. You are a sad gun owner. I have many friends who are gun owners, and you are not one of them.
You are correct. Rather than checking, I took the word of someone that I thought knew what they were talking about.
You, Mike Harris are actually the pathetic one. If these children were actually being “bankrolled” (as you call it) on the order of the NRA bankrolling these gun control laws would have already passed long ago. This is not about your right to bear arms. Keep your pistol and use it responsibly for your self-defense. (Hopefully no one else will “accidentally” use it on you before you can do that. ) This is about weapons of WAR falling into the hands of insane people because of ridiculously lax systems of monitoring, as well as lax laws.
Israel doesn’t arm teachers. They have training security guards in schools who have weapons. Gun violence is so rare in Israel because privately held guns are RARE. Only a small segment of their population is licensed to carry firearms.
I have always wondered why the gun control types, time and again refuse to consider or implement strategies used in Israel (arming teachers) that have proven to minimize and mitigate school shootings.
Or could it be that the deaths of children shot in school settings are just too valuable of a resource for the anti-gun crowd to do without? Maybe saving children’s lives undermines their agenda?
Just my opinion, but Commissioner Underhill is on to something. These “marchers” are nothing but useful idiots that can be easily replaced by those bank rolling and controlling them.
Some people wrap themselves in the constitution, Some people live it. Keep up the good work students.
The “Millennials” and “Post Millennials” are going to the polls. This is just the beginning.
Dale,
There is no gun show loophole. The exact same laws are applied to sales at gun shows as are applied to all other gun sales. A licensed dealer does a NICS check at a gun show, just like they do at their store. A private seller doesn’t have to do a background check at a gun show, just like they don’t have to at any other location. Criminals don’t buy guns at gun shows, neither have the great majority of mass shooters. It’s just an anti-gun myth.
I am sorry but I dont agree with Doug Underhill.
Learn to work with your fellow commissioners I have never seen so much tension on the county commission,
This time you cant blame Gene Valentino
What Dale Parker said equals common sense .
I’d like to think Commissioner Underhill was “under the weather”, or even drunk when he made his statements about these kids, but this is likely not the case. At least it would be an excuse.
I’m sorry his feelings were hurt by young people speaking out about the shootings which affected their school. If his concern is that the issue is being politicized he should accept that the horrendous lack of any action at all, largely due to subversion by the NRA, is actually the crudest politicization of the issue which has been happening for way too long. It’s good he’s made it clear, that there is no doubt his mind is made up and nothing could convince him that some actions should be taken. We should thank him for his clarity.
“Vote Them Out” doesn’t only mean state and national level elections, but also local officials who are not only tone deaf, but incapable of understanding change.
You do realize the Supreme Court has already clarified this and your liberal interpretation is incorrect.
Your characterization of the NRA is also incorrect. I liken them to the ACLU whereby you may not agree with every position, however the are defenders of our 2nd Amendment. Same with the ACLU where I loath their defense of the Man Boy organization and other sicko groups and positions, they are a defender of the constitution and your 1st Amendment Rights.
I can tell you that the NRA has done a lot for training and Gun Safety and no NRA member has been a mass shooter!!!
Mark Twain was right.
Oh, and the three “alternatives” laid out by Mr. Parker are, at best, cosmetic.
While the Second Amendment right to firearm ownership exists, it originally came with a great deal of responsibility and accountability. And, in most cases, that’s what gun control advocates are asking for.
If the coin were flipped and the recent spate of mass-shooters were any demographic beyond white, Anglo-Saxon, protestant, male there would most likely be a hue and cry unlike anything we’ve recently heard.
Ignorant rednecks. If YOUR kid had been shot to death you’d probably feel differently. Or maybe not. Keep drinking the NRA cool aid, Doug. I’m sure your rant will show up in your opponents’ campaign ads.
For NRA republicans, and my Commissioner please read: FYI: the NRA is totally about making money for gun industries.
Article II of the Constitutional Amendments reads “…a well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.†The second clause, “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed,†qualifies the first clause, “a well regulated Militia†And so it was understood until 2008, when, in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court established an “individual rights†interpretation. District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S 570 (2008). Like most rights, the Second Amendment is not unlimited. “It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose†(Commentary, http://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/). The Court stressed that the right to keep and bear arms is subject to restriction, that protected arms are those used “for lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home,†in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons. United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939).
Doug Underhill’s comments are exactly why I am voting for Alan McMillan.
Real leadership brings people together for solutions, not division.
I am sorry however I really have to stand with Commissioner Underhill on this one and we do not agree on much. However, he is 100% correct. This is not about Kids, never was. You have liberal billionaires such as Soros and Eli Broad and a but load of celebrities (of which all have their own armed security). Not all donors may be known, since March For Our Lives registered as a 501(c)(4), which allows them to keep donor identities secret. Ask yourself why?
This was about and has always been about an Agenda. They could care less about kids and kids lives. This is their opportunity to wound the 2nd Amendment and either take your guns or take a chunk of them.
I want to qualify this comment, I think that 1 child’s life is too many in any circumstance. So I think no matter the source, it is too many. I am also deeply concerned that “Schools” have become a target of terror by mentally ill individuals.
This brings me to my poin; Let me ask you here are some stats that FAR EXCEED anything yet no one is marching, billionaires and Celebrities are not contributing millions to stop yet needlessly 10’s of thousands of kids die each year.
1.) 4600 Kids to Suicide from Bullying, Cyber Bullying.
2.) Average 4015 kids die annually from texting and driving.
3.) Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for U.S. teens. Six teens ages 16 to 19 die every day from motor vehicle injuries. 40% of these nearly 3000 kids yearly are from Drinking and Driving!!!
4.) Over 800 teenagers 15-19 die annually from Drug Overdoses.
5.) Heck, 55 kids a year die on Bicycles! WOW!
This March has nothing to do with March For Lives, if it did they would most certainly be talking about the other 11,000 kids that die from homicide, drugs, drinking, texting, suicide, etc. YET NOT ONE WORD. You want to know why? Because this has nothing to do with them. Children are the tool! The Prop! They are a propaganda piece for those having a much bigger agenda.
1300 Kids a year die from Gunshot and that number is unacceptable. Many are suicide and some are accidents in the home and hunting accidents. There are homicides, etc. NEARLY ALL of these were preventable. NEARLY ALL of these there are laws to protect people. For example, weekly someone is shot by a toddler with a gun. Why? The weapon WAS NOT properly secured by the owner. The result, a horrifying death which will hurt that family for a lifetime. SO, we must enforce our gun laws.
Here is some trivia, are you aware if we took the 5 cities with the strongest gun controls and removed them from the statistics… we would be one of the lowest in the world for Gun Violence…. Yeap take out Chicago, LA, New York and you will see an entirely different fact pattern! Imagine that.
Look I agree we need to do some of these things and I am perplexed as to why this has not been done.
1.) Close the Gun Show loophole. This would be easy to solve by obtaining a background check prior to purchase.
2.) Close the private sale loophole. Again, if you were required to get a background check prior and have a card issued then you could document the background check.
3.) I think that there should be a mental health injunction. Whereby there is due process for obtaining and clearing up the injunction. It could work similar to the domestic violence injunction process.
As a Country – we MUST help to treat our mentally ill. Right now all over this country we either jail or leave homeless those that are Mentally Ill and then we act surprised when a Mentally Ill individual blows and kills someone or multiple people. This is NOT ACCEPTABLE today.
This is my take on this.