To date, the sequence of events that has followed every mass shooting since anyone can remember has been as heartbreaking as it is predictable: thoughts and prayers; cries for reform; immediate, indignant admonishments not to "politicize" tragedy; a creeping sense of powerlessness; spikes in firearm sales; and, eventually, the perpetuation of a status quo that treats senseless gun violence as an acceptable byproduct of living in the United States of America. Over the past month, though, the Parkland survivors have worked diligently to turn that narrative on its head, and if you needed any more evidence that what they're doing is working, look no further than the brand of lunacy that right-wing types trotted out this weekend in order to explain away their ideas, ignore their voices, and pretend like the millions of people who turned out across the country for sensible gun-safety legislation actually aren't a big deal after all.

In the morass of bald-eagle avatars that is MAGA Twitter, over the weekend an image of Emma González tearing up a gun-range target was doctored to make it appear as if she were staring solemnly into the camera and tearing up a copy of the U.S. Constitution. It's an obvious fake that only makes sense if you are under the impression that the Constitution contains just the Second Amendment and not, say, the one right before it, which is what guarantees González her right to do all this protesting stuff in the first place. Neither logic nor pixelation, though, was sufficient to stop people like former actor Adam Baldwin from tweeting the picture with a reference to the Hitler Youth, because if you're going to use a picture to tell a lie, you might as well tack on a non sequitur caption to make it seem even more sinister.

Cable news proved to be an only slightly less absurd medium on Saturday, when noted hilarious eponym Rick Santorum criticized the students for their failure to learn first aid in response to the epidemic of mass shootings. Instead of "looking to someone else to solve their problem," suggested Santorum, demonstrating in less than one sentence his alarming perspective about what it is that a legislature is supposed to do, González and company should "do something [like] maybe taking CPR classes." Outraged actual doctors responded by reminding the former Pennsylvania senator and perennial presidential also-ran, who works as a paid contributor to CNN because no serious lobbying firm in Washington will hire him, that when gunshot victims are bleeding to death, chest compressions and artificial ventilation aren't of much use.

As usual, though, the most absurd offering came from dubious brain-supplement webstore Infowars...

...whose principal argument against the policy reforms for which David Hogg argues can be fairly summarized as: "Uh, some white guys are very bad, and all white guys kind of look alike, if you think about it."

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The Parkland teens were subjected to bad-faith arguments and dumb conspiracy theories in the tragedy's immediate aftermath, but their success at keeping gun safety in the headlines since then has prompted opponents to rely on increasingly desperate ploys to try and discredit them. And while no number of marchers could ever prompt Paul Ryan to take action on legislation that 90 percent of Americans support, a major component of every event on Saturday was voter registration. The kids are exposing feckless legislators and forcing politicians to take them seriously, and for any Republican incumbents who hope to keep their jobs this fall, "CPR classes for all" isn't going to cut it.