Former Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Rick Santorum suggested that students rallying for gun control legislation should "do something about maybe taking CPR classes" or find other ways to respond to active shooter scenarios in CNN's State of the Union on March 25.
Santorum's comments come a day after an estimated 1.2 million students and supporters held demonstrations across the country calling for gun reform in the March for Our Lives in the wake of the Feb. 14 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.
"They took action to ask someone to pass a law," Santorum said. "They didn't take action to say, 'How do I, as an individual, deal with this problem? How am I going to do something about stopping bullying within my own community? What am I going to do to actually help respond to a shooter?'... Those are the kind of things where you can take it internally, and say, 'Here's how I'm going to deal with this. Here's how I'm going to help the situation,' instead of going and protesting and saying, 'Oh, someone else needs to pass a law to protect me.'"
According to CNN:
Santorum dismissed the usefulness of "phony gun laws" and appeared to call on students and others to improve their communities and to prepare to respond to further shootings instead of calling for new laws.
"I'm proud of them," Santorum said. "But I think everyone should be responsible and deal with the problems that we have to confront in our lives. And ignoring those problems and saying they're not going to come to me and saying some phony gun law is gonna solve it. Phony gun laws don't solve these problems."
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