Doctors are firing back on Twitter over Rick Santorum’s suggestion that students take “CPR classes” instead of advocating for gun control following last month’s massacre in Parkland, Florida.
Hundreds of thousands of people, including students from throughout the nation, marched on Washington on Saturday, demanding lawmakers pass stricter gun laws after 17 people were shot to death Feb. 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Similar demonstrations occurred in other U.S. cities and across the world.
On Sunday, Santorum accused students of trying to pass the buck when it came to keeping their schools safe.
“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 where there is a violent shooter,” Santorum, a former Republican senator from Pennsylvania and CNN political commentator, said on the cable news network.
His comments drew backlash on social media from doctors, including Eugene Gu, a third-year general surgery resident at Vanderbilt hospital in Nashville, Tennessee.
“The last thing we need is for kids to administer CPR during a shooter situation and then get shot themselves,” Gu told HuffPost in an email Sunday. “So Rick Santorum’s comments are not only an assault on our children’s First Amendment rights but are putting our kids in danger with misinformation.”
Several other health care professionals echoed Gu’s sentiments and reminded Santorum what bullets do to bodies.
Doctors weren’t the only ones to rip Santorum for his tone-deaf remarks. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) tweeted that CPR would do little to save the victim of “AR-15 bullets [that] obliterate organs.”
Survivors of the Parkland massacre and others also hit back.