Ban on assault weapons will save lives

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Assault weapons bans can save lives. Banning high-capacity magazines is even more important, but 15 rounds is still too many for a handgun.

The gun nuts’ hair must be on fire. They have been brainwashed into believing that guns make them safer. They do not. Whenever a loaded weapon is present, everyone is less safe.

Michael Shepherd, Bellwood

Bears’ draft picks, assault weapons

Which will prove more disappointingly ineffectual? (A) The Bears’s high draft choice(s)? Apart from the picks made during Jim Finks’ tenure as the Bears’ GM, with rare exceptions, the Bears’ high draft choices have been duds and the one year when the Bears had a spectacularly good draft (Butkus and Sayers) the teams on which they played were no great shakes.

Or (B) Illinois’ recently enacted ban on “assault weapons” and the like? The contraband can still be purchased out of state or on the black market, and the cottage industry of home adaptation and/or manufacture of such will be unaffected. The black marketeers will be encouraged and enriched.

The Bears might get lucky, but the horrible specter of mass murder should likely not be assuaged by the new legislation.

William P. Gottschalk, Lake Forest

What happened to school truant officers?

My late father would have enjoyed the editorial on chronic truancy. Dad often said, “Public education started going downhill when they eliminated the truant officers.”  

For the uninitiated, at one time teachers, principals or school clerks could request truant officers to investigate an absent child. The truant officer would go to the child’s home to make sure the absence was legitimate, and would bring families missed class work and homework assignments. The truant officer had legal authority, if the absence was found not legitimate. 

I searched online for “What is a truant officer?” and found a 1961 description on the Illinois General Assembly website. When I started elementary school in 1958, CPS still used truant officers, who were Cook County employees, according to the statute. I don’t remember them in use by the time I was in high school in 1965. I wonder if the laws regarding truant officers’ responsibilities and authority are still “on the books?”   

Muriel Balla, Hyde Park

A broken promise?

During the midterms, the Republicans promised that they would read the constitution aloud on the floor the very first day they took control of the House. I must have missed it.

Richard Keslinke, Algonquin