The future looks . . . dim

Chadwick Bowman is a senior at Colorado State University, studying sociology and journalism (a budding "Authorized Journalist"--he'll fit right in), and is ready to set America straight on the topic of guns.

I can confidently say that as young man living in America, I have never been in a situation where I look back and say “wow, good thing I had my gun.”

Well sure--if you haven't needed a gun by the time you've reached your early 20s, guns are clearly without a valid purpose.

I guess we should be thankful that he's not a history major:

The Second Amendment and the Bill of Rights were adopted in 1751; it is now 2011 [got the current year right, at least--the blind squirrel finds an acorn!].

And that's not just a typo--he continues in this vein for a while (my emphasis added):

The issue is this: The Bill of Rights and the Constitution were written in an era that we are so far removed from, it is ridiculous that we still abide by the same social norms that were accepted in the mid-18th century.

If folk from 1751 were present today . . ..

Am I being picky? I mean, are dates all that important? He's only off by about 40 years.

The bigger problem, of course, is that he seems to think that rights become obsolete at some point. I mean, let's spot him the 40 years--hell, give him a hundred and forty--if the Constitution and the Bill of Rights both dated from 1651, would his First Amendment right to proudly display his idiocy be any less valid?

Evidently, because rights apparently do have an expiration date:

“But Chadwick, it’s in the Constitution, so therefore it’s the American standard.” It’s not. We’re in a different time. Today, we tweet, abuse credit cards, watch “Man v. Food” and smoke marijuana, which my Grandma says “turns your brain into a sponge.”

Well, if absorbency is a sponge's defining characteristic, you seem to have proven your Grandma wrong, Chadwick, because you seem to have managed to keep your brain blissfully empty. If, on the other hand, she meant that it renders a brain useless for standard brain-like functions, such as thought, you would seem to be a superb example by which her point can be illustrated.

And yet Chadwick would presume to lecture us on "logic":

The logical concept is to separate everyone from their guns.

Start with me, Chadwick--I want you to.

And now we get to Chadwick's mighty climax:

The Democrats need to do what is right in this situation. This is one of those scenarios in American politics where the smartest, most intuitive citizens need to force legislation upon the people, even when it is not the popular choice. The leadership roles that Congress and the President have taken oaths to uphold need to make decisions that are blatantly and obviously the correct ones, which will make for a safer country. A safer country, even when many citizens do not have the intellectual abilities to understand that it is the safest choice for them.

The thing is, Chadwick, that the beauty of the Second Amendment is that it protects the people's means of stopping even those who think of themselves as "the smartest, most intuitive citizens" from forcing anything on us.

Molon labe, punk. I'll be waiting.

Oh, and how dare you speak of the President's and Congresspeople's oaths (this mysterious, non-existent "oath to uphold leadership roles"), a few short paragraphs after denigrating the one thing they are oath-bound to uphold?

Update: David has more.

Update 2: The Pistolero brings up a very important point:

One wonders if our budding Authorized Journalist has any clue of the implications of what he's advocating here.

Also, see Pistolero's take on this.

By the way, he has been taking a lot of heat in the comments over the "1751" thing. Just in case he does a bit of revisionist editing (and "moderating" comments), I took the liberty of getting a screen capture:

(click to enlarge)