The slaughter of innocent children and their courageous teachers at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut was both tragic and telling: tragic for the loss of these beautiful children and for the loss of the adults who stood by them; and telling for what it says about a society in which gun violence is common and gun control nearly impossible to achieve through our political system. 

The loss of innocent lives to gun violence is a common feature of living in the United States.  It is a daily occurrence, but one that mostly fades into the background of our culture.  This latest murderous spree is all the more tragic for involving young children.  If killers can invade our elementary schools, our malls and theaters, are we and our children not all threatened? 

Gun violence is, however, only one indicator of our culture of violence.  We are also ready participants in the institutionalized violence of war.  Our country traumatized a generation of its youth with its war in Vietnam.  It is traumatizing a new generation with its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  What these wars share in common is that they were all needless and illegal.  They killed children as well as adults in the countries where they were fought and left the US a less decent and less respected country.

Now we fight foreign wars and hunt out “enemies,” including US citizens, with drone attacks.  Drones are remote control surveillance and killing machines, and the US president keeps a “kill list” for who will be attacked.  He personally approves who will die at the hands of drones.  But this remote control killing is far from perfected and many innocent people, including young children, are victims of drone attacks.

At the upper level of the violence spectrum, the US still maintains some 5,000 nuclear weapons in its active and reserve arsenals, some 1,000 of which are on high-alert status, ready to be launched within moments of an order to do so.  These are weapons capable of destroying cities, as they did at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  In a major war they could destroy civilization and lead to the extinction of most or all complex life on the planet.  In other words, with nuclear weapons we are playing Russian roulette with the human future. 

How many innocent children died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki?  How many children could die as victims of nuclear war?  We threaten the lives of innocent children and adults every day with our nuclear arsenal.

If a lone gunman kills innocent people we call him “deranged.”  But what shall we call the society that nurtures such gunmen?  What shall we call a society that makes guns so readily available?  What shall we call a society that trains its youth to fight in needless and illegal wars, or one that makes blood-spattering video games available to its youth? 

Yes, the lone gunman who murdered his mother and then slaughtered innocent children and adults at the elementary school in Newtown was certainly deranged.  But what about the members of Congress who refuse to pass tough gun control laws?  Or who vote for huge military expenditures while seeking to make cutbacks to education and social programs?  Or who fail to assert leadership to bring the US into compliance with its treaty obligations to negotiate in good faith for a cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to achieve nuclear disarmament in all its aspects?

I mourn the loss of the innocent children at Newtown, as I mourn the loss of the innocent children who have been the victims of our foreign wars and drone attacks.  I mourn the children who die needlessly of diseases that are preventable because we choose to spend our resources on military hardware rather than on the health of the children of the world.  I fear a country that emphasizes its military and its prisons over the education and security of its children. 

The disparity between wealth and poverty in our country and in the world breeds distrust and increases violence.  That violence is turning its ugly head back on our country.  We have a choice: we can continue to be pushed around by gun dealers in the guise of the National Rifle Association or we can take guns off our streets.  We can continue to fight needless wars, or we can support international law, which prohibits warfare except in self-defense.  We can continue to feed the hungry appetite of the military-industrial-academic complex, or we can feed hungry children here and throughout the world.  We can continue to breach our obligation to seek the elimination of nuclear weapons, or we can provide leadership for a nuclear weapon-free world.

In thinking about the tragic deaths of the children and teachers at Newtown, we have another chance to decide what kind of society we choose to be.  In our democracy, however imperfect, the future is in our hands.