A modest proposal

Dear Diary, City of Buffalo, Buffalo Police, University Police, and anyone else who will listen:
I've got a bone to pick with all of you, and I know I'm not the only person who wants these questions answered.
The second amendment and the Queen City would appear to be on a collision course. The past month has shown more than enough evidence of that.
The shooting in the Allentown restaurant Merge in January by a deranged dishwasher left the proprietor wounded and his 18-year-old son dead.
Not long after that, there was a shooting outside of the Hotel Marriott in Amherst, right outside of the University at Buffalo's doorstep.
Trinity Place, also in Allentown, was the site of a nearly four-hour hostage situation that left Eric Ocasio, 27, of Buffalo, dead. Ocasio succeeded in shooting and injuring a police officer before committing 'suicide by police' by pointing his gun in the wrong direction – at the remaining SWAT teams and police officers.
Four days later, Jason Ocasio, brother of the aforementioned deceased, took his own gun to Buffalo's police station and pointed it at an officer. After a wild car chase, James Bond-style, he was apprehended and remains in custody.
And of course, who could forget last week's complete fiasco right here on North Campus?
No one could forget the disaster that wasn't – the frantic search for Lockwood Library's invisible gunman with his magic bullets.
The drama of the downtown Buffalo area would not appear to be contained within the city limits.
It's been a crazy week, an exhausting month, and a grueling round of fear and anxiety, and it all goes back to one thing – guns.
Frankly, before all of this drama happened, my interest in a person's Second Amendment right to possess weapons of the firearm variety was minimal. Of course, I cried when hearing about the massacres at Columbine High School and Virginia Tech, and make jokes about the card-toting members of the National Rifle Association who mostly reside in and around the Texas border.
My modest proposal, however, is this: leave it at home, everybody. All of it – especially your guns. And if that doesn't work, then maybe we should do away with the entire Second Amendment.
One of the most absurd sayings I've ever heard is the tag phrase, 'Guns don't kill people, people kill people.'
Yeah, people do kill people – with guns. What a revolutionary concept.
What use does a resident of urban Buffalo or a student at UB have for possessing a firearm?
We live in a society where information is so easily accessible you can order a gun off the Internet and find blueprints for a bomb on Google.
All of these avenues for information would seem to be used as more avenues for the crazies to plot their next act of insanity and murder against innocent people.
Guns belong to a certain demographic of people. Those people are members of law enforcement, whose job is to protect innocent civilians.
I'm not saying that people should blindly and senselessly hand over all of their freedoms to police and other authorities. That is a recipe for disaster and a dystopian universe.
What I am saying is that those with power also have a responsibility to protect us. Therefore, the police and other law enforcement officials, who have been specially trained, should have the Second Amendment reserved for them.
Seriously, people, the school and street-shooting craze has really gotten old. It's time to take a progressive step toward a more peaceful society by eliminating a threatening object from restaurants and school libraries and investing real faith in those who can and will be able to protect us.
It's a step I'm willing to take.

E-mail: shane.fallon@ubspectrum.com