Despite the dire predictions of the Mayan calendar, the world did not end on Dec. 21, 2012. However, on that morning at 9:30 as the nation stood silent and the bells tolled 26 times in memory of the victims of the Newtown, Conn., Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, we were painfully reminded of the fragility of life.

At this time of year when we espouse “peace on earth and goodwill toward men” let us be mindful of what this latest in a series of national tragedies means to us all: those 20 dead school children were our own children, those six adults our own teachers and community members.

As Americans, we have an urgent responsibility to seek answers in addressing our culture of gun violence. While some reasonable response must come in the form of improved gun-control regulations along with increased criminal codes and penalties, the ultimate resolution will largely lie in education.

The serious issues and warning signs of mental illness that can relate to these violent acts must also be better understood and thoughtfully mitigated. We must become more proactive than simply reactive.

However, it clearly makes no sense to require background checks and waiting periods for gun purchases through dealers when anyone can simply purchase a gun at a gun show without one.

It makes no sense for the 1994 Brady Bill to expire in 2004 without still being renewed to impose a continued ban on assault weapons along with commensurate firearms controls.

It makes even less sense to understand why we have over 300 million guns privately and legally owned in this nation under Second Amendment Constitutional protections, but virtually no public education to dispel gun violence. Think of it as driver’s ed before getting a license. We need to implement a public school-based program to sensitize our children to this societal crisis where some 12,000 Americans are being gunned down annually. This goes well beyond whatever cursory training is required before acquiring a gun permit. We need a grassroots approach that engages this as a national conversation starting with our youngest citizens, much in the manner in which Civics used to be taught in schools. A good place to start. A school effort further supported at home, in the community, and through our religious institutions.

When skies grow dark and children die,

Do you suppose that then there’ll be a cry,

For all the wasted time we’ve spent,

On buying guns and armaments.

Instead to choose to foster hope,

Through common sense as best we cope,

To understand why it passes,

For innocent kids to be killed in classes.

To that end, I advocate, and have personally reached out to Windham Weaponry to provide grant funding for an RSU 14 schools’ anti-gun violence program. They should contribute some of the proceeds from the $70 million sale of Bushmaster to Cerberus Capital Management, along with current company profits from the sale of the same AR-15 style rifles used in the Newtown and Aurora mass killings, and the D.C. sniper murders. Cerberus has already taken steps in the Newtown aftermath to divest itself from Freedom Group Inc. which distributes those weapons.

Windham Weaponry should likewise acknowledge its role in producing these guns and having them ultimately used in too many senseless acts of violence. They have a moral obligation to do something. This Windham-based educational initiative could provide the template for a national school effort to help our children understand and become better aware of the inherent risks that guns present to public safety when used with ill intent. Let’s endeavor in this program, in part, to counter their exposure to pervasive violent media content that desensitizes through video games, TV shows, and movies providing graphic violence as entertainment. While old habits die hard, young children, and others should not die to gun violence.

My late mother, Grace Shuer, was a career high school English teacher. In 1980, she had a gun pointed at her head in the classroom by an intruder looking for one of her students while she was teaching. Fortunately, that targeted student was absent on that day, or Bridgeport, Conn., might have joined the lexicon of nearby Newtown, Conn, along with Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, Tuscon, Fort Hood and countless other communities etched into our national pysche as sad epitaphs to gun violence.

One of my earliest childhood memories was being sent home from school by my tearful fourth-grade teacher when President Kennedy was shot in Dallas on that November day in 1963. At what point will we collectively embrace the idea that gun violence no longer needs be this great nation’s legacy?

This is indeed a watershed moment in our history where we can choose to effectively change, or continue to look the other way, time after time after time of needless tragedy. When we fail to provide safe schools and communities for our children, we all fail.

Please join me in this cause, the very future of our society depends on upholding its very tenets of “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” with special emphasis on Life.

It’s starts with education and awareness, and hopefully ends in a better, safer society for us all.

Per the late Robert F. Kennedy, also a victim of gun violence, “Some men see things as they are and say, ‘Why?’ I dream of things that never were and say, ‘Why not?’”

Martin Shuer is a resident of Windham.