Former Sen. Rick Santorum’s comments came a day after hundreds of thousands of people, including high school students from around the country, protested at the March for Our Lives in Washington. | Alex Wong/Getty Images Santorum: Parkland students should learn CPR instead of marching

Former GOP Pennsylvania senator and presidential candidate Rick Santorum said Sunday that students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, should have responded to the massacre of their classmates by “taking CPR classes” instead of “looking to someone else to solve their problem.”

When he made the comments, duringan appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Santorum was arguing that gun laws wouldn’t make schools safer on their own, and he said the students should instead focus on ways to help respond to a mass shooter instead of advocating for tougher laws.


“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 [so] that when there is a violent shooter, that you can actually respond to that?” he said during a panel discussion.

Santorum’s comments came a day after hundreds of thousands of people, including high school students from around the country, protested at the March for Our Lives in Washington and at satellite marches around the country. Students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School organized the march to advocate for stricter gun control laws.

Santorum went on to suggest that “phony gun laws” wouldn’t keep students safe.

“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?,’” he said. “Instead of going and protesting and saying, 'Oh, someone else needs to pass a law to protect me.’”

Responding to Santorum’s remark about CPR, fellow panelist Van Jones noted that his son was about to start high school.

“I want him focused on algebra and other stuff,” Jones said. “If his main way to survive high school is learning CPR so when his friends get shot … that to me, we’ve gone too far.”

