COMMENT It began like any day in America.

With 10 days to Christmas, people were checking off shopping lists, sprucing and fixing homes and finalising getaway trips. None of the 320 million people across the country knew the horror that was going to be visited on them that morning – none, except one man.

It was around noon when they learnt what he had done, after news coverage of his act brought the first feelings of sickness to the nation’s gut.

In days and weeks that followed, whole communities and cities in the United States stood with Connecticut’s Newtown, numbed with shock and grief as they laid to rest the 20 children and six teachers of Sandy Hook Elementary School slaughtered by gunman Adam Lanza on the morning of Dec 14, 2012. Lanza also killed his mother before the school rampage.

Three years later, we’d be forgiven if those kids are no longer on our mind. Gun-related massacres are happening with such frequency – and intensity – in the US that each incident barely remains on our memory for more than a few weeks.

And as though the violence itself was not enough, this month’s shootings in San Bernardino, California, had the spectre of terrorism too, posing new complexity to US authorities who until a few years ago had equated terrorism with more sophisticated attacks.

But whether it’s a mad man acting on his own, or a dozen or more radicalised killers spending weeks and months planning an attack – like in Paris – what’s common here is high-powered guns ending up in wrong hands.

Toward this, we have to ask, what is – or rather, not – being done to stop the carnage?

There seems more inaction than action, after the US Senate move last week to disallow a bill supported by Democrats to empower the attorney-general to block gun sales to people on federal ‘watch lists’.

To be fair, not all US states are complacent about gun controls. Connecticut, never the same since the Sandy Hook killings, said after last week’s Senate decision it will still implement the Democrats' bill at state level.

Also, in the same week, the Supreme Court led stand an ordinance banning semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines despite gun advocates’ argument that this essentially violates the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment.

But curbs on assault-rifle ownership didn’t stop the San Bernardino killers from acquiring such weapons. California, Connecticut, Illinois, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and the District of Columbia are among states with such restrictions.

So, if laws themselves don’t work, what would?

Is there another way?

On this third anniversary of Sandy Hook, let’s ask ourselves: Is there another way?

Maybe, if we allow our children to learn about guns the same they learn about everything else in school.

I’m not an educator. Nor am I qualified in psychology. But I do know that our strength or weakness in anything depends on how well we know it.

Like many young boys, I grew up till a certain age fascinated by the power of the gun – the attention it gets when wielded, the loud explosion it causes when fired, and, most interestingly, its ability to end any life it’s aimed at. Fortunately, between my childhood and adult life – by which time I learnt there was more harm than good in guns – I killed no one.

But I grew up in Malaysia, where having a round of ammunition without valid reason can get you hanged, forget a gun. The country’s laws were prohibitive enough for my education. Such laws will never be passed in the United States. But learn they must the children of this nation that guns are often made for one reason, and one reason only, and should never fall into wrong hands.

From elementary school, there should be lessons on the danger of firearms. Kids should learn about the sad endings many like them have met because of guns that end up with the wrong people. No doubt, the children who are given such education may still become potential victims in a gun drama someday. But there is also the chance of preventing the odd shooter through such learning.

I know this is a long path compared to the instant remedy needed for today’s menace. But passive as it sounds, it’s also possibly the most effective way of creating a new generation of Americans who will know where a gun’s place in society is – in the hands of law enforcement.

There is, unfortunately, no silver bullet here.

BARANI KRISHNAN is a Malaysiakini reader and journalist who lives in New York.