Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will retire at the end of the year. But before he goes, he took one last opportunity to push gun control.
Duncan used the deaths of young people to make an emotional case for gun control. “Sixteen thousand. In my first six years as secretary of education, that’s the number of young people who were killed across our country,” Duncan said, choking up. “That’s an average of seven a day. That’s a devastating loss.” He went on to tell stories of students he met with who didn’t think they would live until adulthood.
Duncan expressed the frustration of the Obama administration over the failure to get any legislative success on gun control. “Like the president, I feel there has been no greater frustration, no greater disappointment, than Congress’s unwillingness to move the most simple, the most basic, laws to better protect our children,” he said. “There is not a greater disconnect in public policy between what the American public wants in terms of preventing gun violence and increasing safety, and what Congress has actually done.”
Duncan also spoke about reforming police training and conduct, not just in Ferguson or Chicago, but nationwide.
Duncan spoke at Saint Sabina Church in Chicago. He worked in Chicago before becoming secretary of education and will move back there in retirement.
Despite frequent media coverage of violence, most students feel safe in school. In 1995, 12 percent of students felt afraid of attack or harm during the school year, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics and the Bureau of Justice Statistics. By 2013, that number fell to 4 percent. Rates of theft, violent crime and serious violent crime at school are lower today than they were two decades ago.
Duncan fielded a question on charter schools, commenting that, “Great charter schools are part of the solution. Bad charter schools are part of the problem. … Great traditional schools are part of the solution. Bad traditional schools are part of the problem.”
Another questioner asked Duncan if he has any plans to run for public office, to which many in the audience applauded. Duncan replied, “I have never run for public office, and I don’t have any plans to run for public office.”
Jason Russell is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
