Washington (CNN) CNN commentator and former Pennsylvania GOP Sen. Rick Santorum on Sunday suggested students protesting for gun control legislation would be better served by taking CPR classes and preparing for active shooter scenarios.

"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 that when there is a violent shooter that you can actually respond to that," Santorum said on CNN's "State of the Union."

Santorum's comments came a day after protesters assembled at March for Our Lives events in Washington and across the country to demand gun control legislation in the wake of the deadly school shooting in Parkland, Florida.

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.

"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.'"

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