Less than 72 hours after he first suggested that survivors of the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, should start taking CPR classes “instead of looking to someone else to solve their problem,” Rick Santorum admitted on Wednesday that he didn’t mean that literally.
“Well, the fact of the matter is I did misspeak in using the term CPR,” Santorum told CNN’s Chris Cuomo. Then, in an attempt to turn the controversial comments into a joke, he added, “I think Sanjay Gupta’s job here at CNN is probably safe as being the medical commentator on things.”
Medical professionals, including doctors and other first responders, pushed back against Santorum’s statement, with one CPR instructor characterizing the proposed solution to gun violence as “grossly inappropriate.”
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Santorum went on to argue that the focus on his specific words “obscured” his larger point, which is that we should be heralding “organizations and people who have actually focused on what we can do in our individual schools and communities to actually prevent these types of things.”
He said he would rather see local programs to “promote mentoring” and “stop bullying” than national movements to pass stricter gun laws. “What I see happen here is avoiding the issues that are really actually unifying,” he continued. “I think that’s the most disturbing thing.”
Cuomo responded by reminding Santorum about the “single metric” that distinguishes the United States from every other developed country that does not have nearly the same level of gun violence: access to guns. “And it seems like you and others on your side of the fence are going after these kids, who are survivors, in the interest of political expediency.”
Santorum insisted that wasn’t the case and that he “respects” the students’ right to protest, but that’s not how the organizers of last weekend’s March for Our Lives saw it. Appearing on the same morning show Monday, student leader Lauren Hogg called Santorum’s comments “completely absurd,” adding, “The fact that he’s saying CPR when my friends are dying on my floor and nothing is being done about it is just horrible. I think he’s just using it as a distraction to get their attention away from guns.”
“At the end of the day, if you take a bullet from an AR-15 to the head, no amount of CPR is going to save you,” her brother David Hogg added, “because you’re dead.”
