U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin said Friday she sees areas of consensus — such as more stringent background checks and better mental health care — as starting points in the national move to curb gun violence.
The first-term Democrat indicated any ban on assault weapons or high-capacity ammunition clips would require careful scrutiny.
“If we move in that direction, it’s going to be for me a lot of listening to Wisconsin sportsmen and others who say let’s look closely at this list (of weapons),” Baldwin said. “Let’s make sure that it’s not limiting the type of things we celebrate here in the state of Wisconsin in terms of our sporting tradition but that it is truly keeping weapons of war off the streets of Wisconsin and everywhere else.”
During her first visit to La Crosse since her November election to the Senate, Baldwin toured Gundersen Lutheran’s new behavioral health inpatient clinic as well as the construction site of the massive new hospital, slated to open in 2014.
Baldwin praised Gundersen for expanding its mental health services and noted a need to focus national attention on the system.
“It’s sort of stretched to capacity, over capacity in many places, and I think that the tragedy at Newtown, the tragedies we’ve seen here in Wisconsin, are very appropriate prompts for a national conversation not just on gun safety but on mental illness and our ability to respond to people in crisis.”
