Community Corner

Ritter To Take On Gun Control, Mental Health This Session

Waterford's sole state representative shared her thoughts on how gun control laws and laws regarding mental health care could change following the Newtown massacre.

The state’s General Assembly is now in session. And one of the biggest pushes this year will be gun control and preventing school shootings like the one at Newtown, State Rep. Betsy Ritter, D-Waterford, said Friday.

Ritter has been named to the mental health subcommittee of the state’s bipartisan task force on gun violence prevention and children’s safety. In a Friday interview with Patch, she said she will be looking into improving mental healthcare in the state and hopes stronger gun control laws will be passed.

“It will certainly be a priority,” Ritter said.

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On gun control, Ritter said she hopes the state will pass a ban on high-capacity magazines. She wasn’t sure what that number should be yet, saying it might help to have it the same as other states as to not create a magnet, but said she certainly would like to ban 30-bullet magazines that were used in the Sandy Hook shootings.

"I've heard the argument that there is already a zillion out there," Ritter said. "Well I don't think having two zillion out there is going to help things."

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On the mental health side, she said there were a variety of mandates that are possible. For example, she said taxpayer-paid health insurance for low-income people often provides more extensive mental health coverage for customers than commercial plans, and that could be something that becomes mandated for all health insurance plans.

She also said there could be stronger programs in schools to identify students with mental illness. She said there would be a cost to doing any of that, either through higher taxes or increased cost of health care premiums, and the legislature will have to work through it.

“That will definitely be a complication,” Ritter said.

Additionally, she said there are no mandates that an adult has to receive mental care if they don’t want to and have committed no crime. Ritter said that could be mandated, but the key is designing a law that doesn’t infringe on people’s rights.

Most of all though, she was worried that Nancy Lanza decided to take her son Adam Lanza out of the Newtown school system when he had trouble socializing. Instead, she said she wants a culture where parents want to send their children to school because they know the school systems will work with the child to socialize them and make them feel comfortable.

“That really bothers me,” Ritter said. “That you would want to take your child away from all of that and isolate them, where you know they won’t be socialized, rather than have them (in the schools).”


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