Santorum: Instead of Protesting, Parkland Students Should ‘Do Something’ Like ‘Taking CPR Classes’

Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R—PA) offered the young survivors of mass shootings plaguing America some unconventional advice: instead of demanding legislative change, try taking a class on CPR or active shooter drills instead.

“How about kids, instead of looking to someone else to solve their problem, do something about maybe taking CPR classes or trying to deal with situations where there is a violent shooter that you can actually respond to that,” he said on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday. The comments arrived a day after the March For Our Lives, a nationwide demonstration organized by the student survivors of the Parkland massacre in February.

Santorum said the historic march — which was attended by an estimated 800,000 people in Washington D.C. alone — would do little to actually combat gun violence in America. He suggested students would be better off spending their time training themselves to fight for their lives in a school building during a mass shooting, rather than demanding lawmakers pursue common sense regulations and further background checks to purchase guns.

“They took action to ask someone to pass a law, they didn’t take action to say, ‘How do I as an individual deal with this problem?” he added. “Phony gun laws don’t solve these problems.”

Santorum’s comments immediately got pushback from other guests on the show, including former President Ronald Reagan‘s deputy assistant Linda Chavez, who said “I’m sorry, I believe in the second amendment, I own guns, I’ve owned guns all my adult life, but I also believe that they can be regulated.”

Watch a clip of the segment via CNN above.

[image via screengrab]

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