NRA Hustler, Rick Santorum, says Parkland #NeverAgain Activists Should Stop Pushing for Gun Reform and Learn CPR
In what has to be one of the most callous, repugnant comments to fall out of the mouth of a Republican since young activists have taken the nation by storm in their push for gun safety laws, Rick Santorum stated on CNN Sunday morning and I quote:
SANTORUM: Yeah, I mean, this is the bottom line. Is this a political effort? Is this a political movement? It very well may be, and that's fine. If the organizers, who certainly supported it, the Hollywood elites and the liberal billionaires who funded this, it's all about politics.
Is this really all about politics, or is it all about keeping our schools safe? Because if it is about keeping our schools safe, then we have to have a much broader discussion than the discussion that's going on right now.
How about kids, instead of looking to someone else to solve their problem, do something about maybe taking CPR classes, or try to deal with situations where there is some violence and how you actually respond to that?
#NeverAgain activist and victim of gun violence, David Hogg, was fast to clap back at Santorum’s provocative statement.
Monday morning in an interview on CNN, David Hogg and his sister Lauren, further addressed Santorum’s statement:
“I just think it’s completely absurd that he’s even thinking about teaching us CPR when with we’re having gun violence all across America and even in our schools,” Miss Hogg said. “The fact that he’s saying CPR when my friends are dying on my floor and nothing is being done about it — he’s just using it as a distraction away from guns.
“I saw it last night on the news,” Mr. Hogg said. “Students are able to respond and administer whatever first aid they can assuming the person’s still alive. At the end of the day, if you take a bullet from an AR-15 to the head to no amount of CPR is going to save you because you’re dead.”
Doubting the motives of hundreds of thousands of Americans who gathered in cities for a massive March for Our Lives to call for sensible gun safety laws, Santorum’s depraved statement that kids “should take CPR” classes exemplifies precisely what the Republican party and their NRA sponsors seek to do: Silence the people and suppress their votes to in order to protect their megadonors.
Santorum and the Republican party are both heavily funded by the NRA, an organization that expanded it’s mission in the 1980s to become a military grade arms dealer:
NRA lobbyist, arms dealer played key role in growth of civilian market for military-style guns
The legislative changes that LaPierre supported as the NRA’s chief lobbyist in the mid-1980s opened the door to the import of military-surplus weapons, which effectively had been banned for two decades. The legislation helped make a new, more powerful class of firearms more readily available to civilian gun owners and begin to shift the profile of American gun ownership.
The arms deal put together by Vos’s company — a $58 million venture to import 50-year-old American-made M-1 rifles from South Korea back to the United States — proved so lucrative that other gun merchants immediately tried to follow its lead. Other importers would seek to bring in more military weapons, not just American but also foreign-made arms such as Russian Kalashnikovs and Israeli Uzis, and new business associations sprang up to represent their interests in Washington.
The Blue Sky deal may have helped whet the appetite of American consumers for more and more military-style weapons. Before long, American manufacturers stepped up domestic production of such firearms, including semiautomatic assault rifles and high-capacity pistols, to meet the burgeoning demand.
The United States has become a war zone where a small handful of arms dealers, gun manufacturers and the NRA are making a killing flooding the streets with weapons which comes with a high cost to the nation.
NRA has long history of suppressing data on gun violence
Most important, Webster and others found a huge disparity in gun dealers: Roughly 1 percent of all gun stores in the country accounted for more than half of the crime guns the ATF traced in the late 1990s, according to a Hopkins report. And in some cities, Webster found that just a few stores were responsible for selling weapons recovered in 70 percent to 90 percent of all gun crimes.
The average price of an assault-style rifle fluctuates somewhat with supply and demand. Online distributors currently offer versions for under $200, though the average price appears to be around $1,000. A SIG Sauer MCX like that used by the Orlando gunman retails for about $1,700.
In most states, anyone legally allowed to possess a handgun can also purchase an AR-15 or other assault-style rifle, with no further requirements. In Florida, for example, there is no waiting period for would-be buyers of rifles or other long guns.
Not even people on the terrorist watch list are barred from purchasing assault-style rifles. An attempt to close that loophole was voted down by Senate Republicans in 2015, and was blocked again shortly after the Orlando shooting the folllowing year.
Santorum and other shrills for the NRA who speak for a very small minority, (wealthy gun manufacturers and arms dealers), should expect to continue to get called out for stomping out the voices of the majority of Americans.
April 7th, Townhalls around the nation will be held to open up the debate on gun safety.
The NRA will no longer be able to hijack the debate and our democracy. Time’s up.