Sandy Hook panel issues final recommendations - but are they viable?
HARTFORD, Conn. -- Gov. Dannel P. Malloy says some recommendations from a commission reviewing the Newtown school shooting face financial and political challenges.
The Democrat on Friday received the final report from the Sandy Hook Advisory Commission, formed after the 2012 killings of 20 first-graders and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Malloy told The Associated Press that he doesn't believe there's an appetite in the General Assembly to pass more significant gun control, beyond the sweeping legislation approved in 2013.
The panel's final report includes recommendations that every firearm be registered in Connecticut and serial numbers be etched on shell casings for ammunition.
Malloy said the state must find ways to fund more mental health services. He said Connecticut is working to receive greater federal reimbursement for services.
The panel focused on how the 20-year-old shooter, Adam Lanza, had become isolated during his adolescence and young adulthood. Lanza's mental illness has been well documented and a report released in November said that the gunman had severe mental and emotional problems that went largely ignored by schools and possibly his parents.
The report released Friday devotes much attention to the stigma of mental illness. Dr. Harold Schwartz, commission member and psychiatrist-in-chief at Hartford Hospital's Institute for Living, told CBS News correspondent Elaine Quijano that the stigma of mental illness led Lanza's mother to allow him to become a recluse.
"The mother almost colluded with Lanza's own withdrawal from society," Schwartz told CBS News correspondent Elaine Quijano. "And so he lived out his last years of his life alone essentially in his room, communicating to his mother only by email and online to a micro society of mass murder enthusiasts."
Among the key findings and recommendations in the final report:
- Require classrooms to have doors that can be locked from the inside.
- Require registration, including a certificate of registration, for every firearm.
- Build systems of care that go beyond treating mental illness to foster healthy individuals, families and communities and embrace overall psychological, emotional and social well-being.
- A fully functional mental health system will require better coordination and access to a broad range of necessary services across payment systems.
- Form multidisciplinary teams to conduct risk assessments in schools.