What a struggle to write this column about the 20 first-grade children and six women educators shot to death by a 20-year-old male assailant, in a true safe haven—an elementary school in the low-crime town of Newtown, Conn. The Daily News’ front-page headline “The World Weeps” said it all.

Yes, the world weeps and now must work to prevent these unnatural, heinous and heartbreaking disasters where even young children and their teachers are shot to death by weapons which enable such cataclysmic acts of violence. Something must be done—whatever it takes to control and strictly limit their use—and we have to be willing to try the solutions.

Indeed, it would help if the world wept a little over every taking of innocent life, whatever the victim’s age—and if we heeded the research that finds that the violence so appallingly rife in today’s entertainment and arts does affect real-life behavior and attitudes.

Lamentably unheeded was how murder rates surged a generation after television was introduced. An American Medical Association report appeared in the July 27, 1992, New York Times Editorial Notebook piece, “The Television Time Bomb: Violence on the Tube, a Public Health Issue.” And murder and other fictional mayhem then were relatively mild compared to today’s standards. Standards? Yes, prevention means real concern about standards.

So let’s stop watching those low-standard programs, stop listening to low-standard music, too. Although it could use some Chanukah songs, 106.7 FM’s all-Christmas-music programming gets high ratings and is singable and peaceable. And something comparable is surely a year-round need.

And oh-so-critically needed is the heeding of experts such as former New York Medical Examiner Dr. Michael Baden, who warned that “everywhere medical examiners look—whether it’s automobile accidents, drownings, homicides, suicides, falls and fires—alcohol consumption is in the picture.” And on the evening of Saturday, Dec. 15, was it suicide that ended a woman’s life when she was struck by a car after falling from John Finley Walk onto the FDR Drive? I learned about this very nearby tragic event from an apartment house staff member. Radio traffic news only said, “Avoid the impassable FDR Drive”—and neither NY1 nor the papers has reported this violent death.

To “stop the madness”—and, in suicides, often great sadness—every act of violence should be reported, preferably in the paper of record. And reporters, editors and columnists must always note whether alcohol or other mind-altering drugs were involved.

The 19th Precinct Community Relations Officers haven’t yet gotten back to me on this case, but preventing such tragedies means knowing what caused them and, as a general warning to the public, making it known whether alcohol use on a holiday-season Saturday evening made this woman’s problems seem insurmountable.

Alcohol overuse can indeed cause temporary insanity, and a recent Times op-ed piece was right to say that Alcoholics Anonymous should not be so anonymous, because it can prevent so many human disasters. So the number to call is 212-406-0749—and you policy makers, especially, you must attend “open meetings” to learn how the sober life is infinitely saner, safer and, yes, even joyful.

And in working to overcome the madness that has the whole world weeping, we do not forget to help overcome the unprecedented and continuing hardships and losses inflicted by that natural disaster, Hurricane Sandy.

’Tis the season to be especially caring—and let’s take that care forward into the new year.

Speakers from the neighborhood addressed a range of local concerns, including environmental friendliness, bad landlords and gun control, which residents considered particularly important following the Dec. 14 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

“I’m wondering why we can’t register and inspect every weapon that is not going to be under an assault rifle ban, and why we can’t insist upon some kind of liability for gun holders, just like we have for driving a car and driving a power boat,” said Joyce Silver, a Columbus Avenue resident. “And why don’t we have schools for people who have guns, so that they have to pass safety and handling regulations?”

New York state Sen. Adriano Espaillat was sympathetic to Silver’s worries about guns’ accessibility. He said that he and Brewer were pushing in City Hall to establish gun buyback programs in neighborhoods across the city. “I think that locally, at the ground level, we have to do the best we can to bring back every gun possible,” he said, mentioning that political debate was not enough. “We want to do this at the grassroots level and bring it from the bottom up. … Every community must do what they can to eradicate guns.”

He noted, “I don’t see why people should have a semiautomatic rifle in their closet. I just don’t understand. It’s not part of my psyche or my culture.”

Assembly Member Richard Gottfried also spoke out against lax gun laws, saying, “It is outrageous that it has taken such an escalated series of mass murders to apparently put this issue on the front burner. We hope that it will produce results.”

Brewer voiced her support of stricter gun regulation as well. In response to a question about funding a march in Washington, D.C., to lobby for change, though, she said that the approach had to be tactical: “If we went to Washington, we would have to make sure that it included people from other parts of the country where there is stronger NRA [National Rifle Association] support, even upstate. Sometimes I feel like we’re talking to ourselves. I obviously think it’s a good idea from my perspective. The question would be, if we could pinpoint what legislation we could pass to actually do the kinds of things that we’re concerned about.”

One of her main concerns, she said, was firearms getting into the hands of people with mental health conditions, like the mental and personality disorders Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza is rumored to have been suffering from. “That can be lethal,” Brewer said.

In addition to guns, many locals talked about rats. Residents from West 89th, 80th, 72nd and 60th streets complained about the creatures taking over parks and garbage receptacles, and worried that even with the city’s recent efforts to curb infestations—including the “West Side Rat Academy”—not enough has been done.

“We’re quite good at getting rid of rats when we have a specific situation,” said Brewer, noting that she and the Department of Health do building-specific walkthroughs and then collaborate with building owners to address problems. Department officials further stated that the city was installing many “rat-proof” trash compactors and improving garbage cleaning and collection efforts around the neighborhood to prevent rats from prospering in residential areas.

The final heavily discussed issue of the evening was what city officials were doing to reduce the neighborhood’s environmental impact. With urgent concerns about climate change in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, locals asked about ways of switching to alternative energies and reducing carbon emissions.

Brewer was optimistic that the City Council would begin tackling the issue. “The discussion of Hurricane Sandy is going to be formal,” she said. “I think we could use that as an opportunity to try to get other aspects of a more appropriate environmental approach involved. It would be like a whole series of hearings to be planned out on the hurricane, and the ways in which the energy situation should be addressed in every single building. I think that’s the way to approach it.”

She added that this improved environmental approach could be a “silver lining in a horrific situation.”

Via Flickr / kcdsTM

Americans looking at the tragic events of the Newtown school shooting need to stop talking about mental healthcare entirely — for now. Yes, we have a woefully inadequate support system for the mentally ill and it should be fixed. But it is our rampant supply of firearms that enables the homicidally insane to take innocent lives down with them. Without this access, Friday’s killer would have just been a damaged mind in need of help. Without this access, twenty first-graders and six educators from Sandy Hook elementary would still be breathing. To focus on the “why” and ignore the “how” at this historical juncture is an act of deadly negligence.

Our country’s proliferation of guns is a scourge to our safety, our children’s safety, and to our freedom.

On average, 30,000 people are killed by gun violence in the United States each year. If you discount suicide, that number is closer to 12,000. An American dies every 20 minutes from a firearm.

In America you are 20 times more likely to be murdered by a firearm than in any other industrialized country — discounting Mexico, whose drug war boosted their homicide rate even beyond our own.

Anyone who thinks that our gun-related death toll is twenty times higher than other developed countries’ because we have so many more crazy people is practicing self-deceit. American children from the ages of 5 to 14 are 13 times more likely to be murdered by guns than are children in the rest of the developed world. That’s not our only unique statistic.

We also win first place for the number of guns in our homes. America has an estimated 270 million privately owned firearms. At nine guns for every ten Americans, we also have the most guns per capita. The runner-up is war-ridden Yemen, with roughly half as many.

The numbers are jarringly clear, and easy to interpret.

We are not the only wealthy country to ever harbor homicidal maniacs who commit mass shootings; we’re just the only one that consistently chooses not to do something about it.

On April 28, 1996, an Australian man murdered 35 people using a semi-automatic rifle. Less than two weeks later, The Australasian Police Ministers Council convened a special meeting and agreed to a national plan for the regulation of firearms. This agreement outlawed self-loading rifles and self-loading and pump-action shotguns, placed limitations on firearm ownership, and led to the buyback of over 500,000 guns.

The bill didn’t deprive everyone of their guns; it just cut the number of privately owned guns by twenty percent, which were also the types most commonly used in mass killings. In the two decades prior to the national firearms agreement, Australia witnessed 13 mass murders; since the law passed, they haven’t seen a single other case. Their overall firearm homicide rate has dropped by 40 percent.

Scotland has a similar story. In Dunblane, 1995, a 43-year-old entered a school with four handguns and murdered sixteen children. Two years later, the United Kingdom had banned the private possession of all handguns. Since then, the UK’s murder rate is 50 times lower than our own.

These countries acted immediately and saved countless lives.

Friday’s shooter fired up to eleven bullets into each of the six and seven-year-old bodies he targeted; he used one of the several semiautomatic guns his mother kept legally in their home. Needless to say, not a single shot child survived. Some point to Connecticut having relatively “strict” gun laws as evidence that gun control is not the solution.  But Connecticut having some of the “strictest” gun laws is a sign of national failure, not of “gun control” not working. Why did this person’s mother need semi-automatic weapons? Why does anybody who’s not at war need those? Having four such guns in your house, with a mentally ill son, is not “gun control.”

We do not have gun control.

But despite America’s overflowing history of shootings, what happened in Newtown was the first of its kind on our soil—a man massacring children still in primary school.

I’m in my early twenties. I grew up in the Columbine-era, when the image of the bullied teen in a trench coat and leather boots opening fire on his peers became a stereotype almost as quickly as it became fact. Columbine happened, and gun policy remained the same. Will the next generation grow up knowing the “elementary school shooter “ as a facet of their culture?

If we don’t demand that twenty children slaughtered in broad daylight on an otherwise typical school day be the bottom line, then there will never be a bottom line.

On Sunday, addressing the broken parents of Newtown, President Obama alluded to taking a stand against the gun epidemic: “I’ll use whatever power this office holds to engage my fellow citizens in an effort aimed at preventing more tragedies like this,” he said.

“Let us carry on and make our country worthy of their memory,” he continued, referring to the twenty small bodies waiting to be buried over the following days.

Will we hold him to it?