Until we start addressing the US government's part in creating, cultivating and abetting domestic and global terrorism—and hold agencies such as the FBI and Defense Department accountable for importing and exporting violence, breeding extremism and generating blowback, which then gets turned loose on an unsuspecting American populace—we'll be no closer to putting an end to the violence that claimed 50 lives at an Orlando nightclub on June 12, 2016, than we were 15 years ago when nearly 3,000 individuals were killed on Sept. 11, 2001.

Here's what I know:

While US politicians have been lecturing American citizens on the dangers of gun violence and working to enact measures that would make it more difficult for Americans to acquire certain weapons, the United States, the world's largest exporter of arms, has been selling violence to the world, equipping nearly half the world with deadly weapons and profiting to the tune of $36.2 billion.