While most people couldn’t stop praising the students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida for launching a national movement that has exceeded even the most optimistic expectations, former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum has a different view. He criticized the teenagers for devoting their time to protesting in the first place. What should they be doing instead? Learning CPR and practicing active shooter drills, of course. Because, apparently, mass shootings are just a fact of life that must be dealt with and there is nothing that can be done to prevent them.

“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 that you can actually respond to that,” Santorum said on CNN’sState of the Union. When he got pushback that the students actually did take action, he characterized the huge rallies that got hundreds of thousands of people out into the streets as the actions of people who were just looking for someone else to solve their problems.

“Yes, they took action to ask someone to pass a law,” he said. “They didn’t take action 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 an issue? What am I going to do?” The Parkland students were just saying that “someone else needs to pass a law to protect me.” Ultimately, said Santorum, “phony gun laws don’t solve these problems.”