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Today on my island paradise, the heavens weep, and bullets of cold, liquid steel fall upon the thirsty earth to puddle at our feet forming rivers and lakes of collective grief.

From thousands of miles away, and across every mile in between, senses are filled of the bitter taste of loss, burnt and dispersed at roughly 45 deadly rounds per minute by cordite and greed.

And once again, the outrage is palpable as we choke out our brittle words of condolence and a hemorrhage of feelings for 17 lost, young lives — at the hands of yet another lost youth who was bent on waging a bloody, lethal war against non-combatants in what should be a demilitarized zone.

But America is at war. Regular, mortal citizens are at war with greed and false prophets of profit that continue to add up to nothing more than our unrecoverable losses.

The NRA and the congressional representatives who have palmed their blood money bear the burden of not just these 17 lives, but the lives taken at each of the 28 mass shootings that have taken place since the warning shots of the coming epidemic of violence were first fired at Columbine High School in 1999.

For nearly 20 years Congress has failed to act and refuses to outlaw the domestic sale and purchase of weapons designed specifically for the mass destruction of warfare. At least 28 times, Congress has proved negligent in their duty to protect the common welfare of the citizens of the United States.

‘Literally Outgunned’

Mass shootings have become normalized, and they now serve as the impetus for the NRA to increase the hundreds of millions of dollars spent annually on lobbying and payoffs to members of congress whose duty it is to protect and preserve actual human lives, not to protect and promote behemoth, for-profit institutions that sponsor the imminent lawless actions of America’s unique culture of violence and domestic terrorism.

For let’s be clear: Waging war with militarized weapons on non-combatants is the purest definition of domestic terrorism.

Waging war with militarized weapons on non-combatants is the purest definition of domestic terrorism.

But how do we fight back, you cry? We are literally outgunned!

We need only arm ourselves with the mightiest weapons of democracy: our voices, our collective action and our determination to vote these greedy, negligent bastards out of office in 2018 and 2020.

Then we begin the business of creating legislation to stem the flow of weapons of war into the hands of the most vulnerable and volatile members of society.

We begin the business of creating legislation to stop the flow of blood money from greedy lobbyists and Super PACs that buy congressional power to literally shoot down the voting power of American citizens.

But how many more will die in the interim? And how will you use and amplify your voice in this breath-holding space before we finally rise up and act in unison to demand accountability?