Rick Santorum: Parkland Students Should Learn CPR Instead Of Marching
Does Rick Santorum really think that learning CPR can stop school shootings?
Former Pennsylvania Senator and Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum said this morning that the students who survived the February 14th shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School should learn CPR instead of marching to change gun laws:
Former GOP Pennsylvania senator and presidential candidate Rick Santorum said Sunday that students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, should’ve responded to the massacre of their classmates by “taking CPR classes” instead of “looking to someone else to solve their problem.”
In an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Santorum was arguing gun laws wouldn’t make schools safer on their own when he made the comments, and 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 that when there is a violent shooter [so] 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.'”
I’m not exactly sure what CPR has to do with the gun debate unless Santorum is suggesting that a school full of CPR-trained students could have somehow saved the lives of students whose bodies were riddled with high-speed bullets fired by the AR-15 that Nikolas Cruz used in the shooting last month.
Keep speaking Rick.
That sound you hear is more moderates switching from Center-Right to Center-Left.
Keep it up, GOP and NRA.
Maybe if somebody can do CPR on santorum’s soul he can be brought back from the ranks of the living dead.
Nope.
This is why I couldn’t conduct interviews on TV. Faced with something like this, i’d have asked “Senator, are you that desperate or are you really that stupid?”
@Kathy:
I vote for stupid!
Santorum falls into the category of smart yet stupid. He comes across as the kind of guy who would have done well in school, yet somehow he says and does amazingly stupid things. And he has a fatal flaw for a politician: the more people know him, the less they like him
The modern Republican Party: Stupid People with Shitty Values.
Un-flipping-believable.
People in earthquake-prone areas should learn to fix plumbing, rather than demand buildings that can withstand earthquakes.
@Raymond Smith: Well, to quote one famous philosopher:
I’m reminded of the scene from “Office Space” where one employee who actually contributes nothing to company is asked “What is it, exactly, that you do here?”
What is Santorum’s job these days? Does he actually do things we should be interested in?
@OzarkHillbilly:
Isn’t that known as an exorcism?
CPR is always good to know. They should learn CPR and march.
1) A stopped clock is right twice a day: EVERYONE should learn how to do CPR. it’s a no brainier.
2) Modern CPR classes teach how to use an AED. You need to know this.
3) Santorum has always been an ass. This is par for the course. Tone-deaf, completely.
4) I suppose with his perspective, he should also add that kids should lean how to do field amputations, apply tourniquets, pack gaping wounds, and learn triage skills. That would be far easier than making guns a little less accessible. Right?
5) We have self driving cars, and geo-fencing. Why can’t we have gun manufacturers make weapons that won’t work in gun free zones. Yes, this would be tough. Yes, it would raise the cost of guns. Yes, it likely would save lives. Choose.
Or as President Snow would say, “Why are you kids wasting your energy protesting the Hunger Games when you could be out training to win them?”
I expect nothing less from Senator Man on Dog.
Santorum is a Catholic in name only.
In short, kids should expect to be shot at school. Those are some lofty expectations, Senator.
/I don’t know, I guess I was looking for just a little more for my kids. Maybe I’m a bit starry-eyed, so shoot me.
We should praise the police actions with the students at February 14th shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
Telling the students to turn off their F*cken phone so they could not record their incompetence and leading them out as they were criminals with their hands behind their heads because Officer Safety is paramount.
Administering CPR to a gunshot victim would usually cause them to bleed out faster.
Stupid people, shitty values.
One of the better responses to Santorum’s idiocy came from Dr. Jo Buyske, MD, executive director of the American Board of Surgery:
https://twitter.com/BuyskeJ/status/977997418401816576
I’m envisioning David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez hosting a video series on YouTube.
They could demonstrate (with professional assistance) various field medicine techniques and delineate when and how to use the full palette of emergency care stop-gap measures one could employ until EMS / EMTs can safely deploy in a mass shooting scenario.
How to use your hands + clothing to prevent a bleedout. Pro-tips on when to know when to walk-away and when to assist: arterial spurt = DOA, but arterial leakage = a fighting chance. How to pack a gaping chest wound. Off hand suggestions like: “It’s okay if you vomit at the awfulness of the situation, but try not to vomit an open wound. If you do so, make sure you wipe it away as soon as you can.”
No talk of gun control. No politically fraught topics. Just straight-up practical and useful things you can do to save as many lives as you can until paramedics show in case your school is targeted by a shooter.
That would be powerful. And forever steal this abhorrent talking point away from the trogs. I don’t want to re-traumatize these beautiful young people, but it would be powerful and effective.
Booman had fun first quoting Richard Cardinal Santorum and then the statement by the real Pope, Francis,
Speaking of vomit, one young woman who survived Parkland, Sam Fuentes, was on stage speaking at the march, reciting a poem about her friend who was shot and died and got internally freaked out and puked on stage. She ducked down, vomited, she stood up and then she laughed it off and said:
“I just threw up on international television! And it feels great!”
J.K. Rowling (yes, her, really) tweeted:
“She got shot, she watched her friends die, she stood up in front of millions, threw up out of nerves, laughed about it, then finished her speech. #SamFuentes, there are no words ❤️”
I adore Sam Fuentes.
https://jezebel.com/parkland-shooting-survivor-threw-up-mid-speech-resumed-1824063235
I pick weird role models.
None of my heroes don’t appear on no stamps.
We can extend that…it seems like many who support the dumpster fire in the White House are Christians in name only…
@Liberal Capitalist: the nra went apeshit when a gun manufacturer suggested making smart guns that can only be fired by the owner.they quickly retreated that idea.
@An Interested Party:
“Christian” is a tribal identification, not a religion.