Santorum: Parkland Survivors Don't Need to Learn CPR

Santorum walks back post-March for Our Lives comment
By Michael Harthorne,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 28, 2018 1:43 PM CDT
Santorum Says He Misspoke on Parkland Survivors, CPR
In this Jan. 19, 2016 file photo, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum meets with voters in Greenfield, Iowa.   (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

A radiologist in Florida called it "gobsmackingly uninformed" and a trauma surgeon at Johns Hopkins said it's "not effective in this situation," and on Wednesday Rick Santorum walked it back, Business Insider reports. Having watched hundreds of thousands of people march in support of gun control a day earlier, the former Republican senator said Sunday that the survivors of the school shooting in Parkland should take CPR classes "instead of looking to someone else to solve their problems," CNN reports. The comment earned Santorum instant criticism from doctors and Parkland survivors alike. "If you take a bullet from an AR-15 to the head, no amount of CPR is going to save you," Parkland survivor David Hogg said. Others pointed out that stopping the bleeding is the pressing concern for a gunshot victim.

“The fact of the matter is I did misspeak in using the term CPR," Politico quotes Santorum as saying Wednesday. He says he "obscured the larger point" by mentioning CPR. That larger point being that students are being divisive by focusing on gun control instead of mental health and bullying. “What I’ve seen happen here is avoiding the issues that are really actually unifying,” he says. “I mean, that's really the most disturbing thing.” A woman who lost her mother in the Sandy Hook shooting disagrees. "Rick Santorum's words are an insult to the kids of Parkland, my family, and to the countless others who have had loved ones taken by gun violence," Erica Lafferty of Everytown for Gun Safety tells CNN. "For anyone to suggest that the solution to gun violence is for kids to learn CPR is outrageous."
(More Rick Santorum stories.)

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