DURHAM, N.C. — Mike Krzyzewski no longer leads the Duke men’s basketball program, having retired in April following a record-setting, 42-season, coaching career.
The West Point graduate, though, still has strong opinions about leadership, particularly with governmental response — or lack thereof — to the rash of mass shootings that continue to plague the country.
“You shouldn’t vote for the party, you should vote for the people that you serve,” Krzyzewski said Thursday night. “And you should have the guts, the courage, and it’s your duty. It’s your duty to do that. We are not doing that duty at the national level when our country is suffering greatly from it.”
Krzyzewski discussed the subject during the taping of a special town hall episode of his SiriusXM show at Cameron Indoor Stadium’s Champions Club. The show will air beginning Friday night on the satellite radio service. His comments drew applause from the invited SiriusXM subscribers in attendance.
Just in the past three weeks, mass shootings claimed the lives of 19 children and two adults at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and 10 Black people were killed at a Buffalo grocery story by an avowed white supremacist. Both times, the perpetrators used automatic weapons.
A field artillery liaison to the infantry during his time as a captain in the Army in the early 1970s, Krzyzewski said it’s time for elected officials to limit access to those weapons.
“The people that are suffering are people that need you,” Krzyzewski said. “Like, why don’t you? Come on. You know? What the hell are we doing? You know, we’re not taking care of our people. And we can go into the guns. Like, you need an automatic weapon? You gotta be kidding me. You got to be kidding me. It’s disgusting.”
Krzyzewski called out politicians from all parties for their inaction.
“For us to see these kids get killed, members of our African American community get killed in a grocery store, members of our Jewish community getting killed in a synagogue (in a 2018 Pittsburgh shooting),” Krzyzewski said. “Come on. That’s not right. That’s not right. That’s not right. I mean it’s amazingly wrong. It’s amazingly wrong. And you should be ashamed of yourself, if you are in a position of power.”
