Letter: Reagan had common sense

To the Editor:

In May of 1994, Ronald Reagan wrote a letter to the House of Representatives, urging them to pass an assault weapons ban. The law passed and it expired 10 years later.

Recently, the state of Illinois passed an assault weapons ban called the Protect Illinois Communities Act. Some of our local public officials have stated that the law is unconstitutional, and others have said they are not going to enforce the law. The law does not take away assault weapons from people who currently own them. Those owners are grandfathered in.

Reagan had common sense when it came to assault weapons. He felt a ban was a good idea and constitutional. Since state bans began in the late 1980s, prior Supreme Courts ruled that bans were constitutional (up until recently).

What would Reagan think if he were alive when one man opened fire in 2017 on people enjoying a country music concert in Las Vegas and 58 people were murdered and another 489 were wounded? I think he probably would have thought what he wrote in the Boston Globe in support of an assault weapon ban: “While we recognize that assault weapon legislation will not stop all assault weapon crime, statistics prove that we can dry up the supply of these guns, making them less accessible to criminals.”

Pat McNamara

Yorkville