Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Biden's nominee to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, David Chipman, is a longtime gun control advocate. Putting him in charge of the ATF is a guaranteed attack on American's Second Amendment rights. As Wednesday's Senate hearing showed, the guy is also a crackpot and a liar.
If you check out leftist media outlets, including taxpayer-funded NPR, it's clear that Chipman's attraction for Democrats is his commitment to grabbing guns:
Chipman is a veteran of ATF, where he spent 25 years as a special agent. He currently works as a senior policy adviser at Giffords, an organization that advocates for stricter gun laws and is led by former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., who was gravely wounded in a mass shooting in 2011. As part of Giffords' group, Chipman has pushed for greater regulation of ghost guns.
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Chipman has advocated for the federal government to strike a balance that allows law-abiding citizens to own guns for self-defense, hunting and sport while also enabling law enforcement to prevent gun violence.
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He added that although all weapons can be dangerous in "the wrong hands," certain firearms are particularly lethal and should be more strictly regulated.
In the second paragraph, you read that Chipman is just a balanced individual who wants to let Americans enjoy their Second Amendment rights but he wants to keep America safe, too. No howitzers for you! But there's something ominous there. Read that last line: he says that "certain firearms are particularly lethal and should be more strictly regulated."
On Wednesday, in response to Ted Cruz's questioning, Chipman admitted what those "particularly lethal" firearms are: AR-15s. As Sen. Tom Cotton noted, Chipman defined AR-15s so broadly that it "would basically cover every single modern sporting rifle in America today. And when it comes to those AR-15s, Chipman wants to ban them all:
WATCH: Sen. Ted Cruz gets Joe Biden’s ATF Director nominee David Chipman to admit that he wants to BAN the AR-15, the most popular rifle in America.
“With respect to the AR-15, I support a ban.” pic.twitter.com/6nDgalAkRj
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) May 26, 2021
The AR-15 is America's most popular rifle. In 2019, before the world went crazy with COVID and BLM, causing millions of Americans to become first-time gun-owners, a good guess was that there were about 18 million AR-15s in America. There are undoubtedly many, many more now.
AR-15s are popular because they are lovely weapons: easy to use and easy to customize. At the end of the day, though, they are still the classic American rifle, and they don't fire a particularly lethal round. They are almost never used to commit crimes. But Chipman, given power, would seize them.
Chipman's not only an anti-gun fanatic; he's also a liar. Perhaps to justify the government's mass slaughter at Waco in 1993, he's claimed that Branch Davidian members "used 2.50 caliber Barretts to shoot down two Texas Air National Guard helicopters." In fact, while the Branch Davidians shot at helicopters, they failed — and there were no Barretts later discovered at the scene. Chipman wasn't misinformed; he lied, because, as a case agent in the Branch Davidian trial, he knew better.
Showing that he's just a political hack, Chipman absolutely refused to say that he would investigate Hunter Biden for lying on his gun application, which is a clear violation of federal law.
Senator Mike Lee attacked Chipman for attacking new gun-owners during an April 2020 interview, calling them Tiger King wannabes. More importantly, Lee challenged Chipman's disdain for due process and his desire for a Minority Report world in which "criminals" are arrested before committing a crime:
2/2 I find this statement by ATF nominee David Chipman incredibly troubling because – setting aside 2nd Amendment issues – this violates our constitutional requirement for due process.
— Mike Lee (@SenMikeLee) May 26, 2021
Chipman's nomination represents a head-on attack against the Second Amendment. If he is confirmed, you can bet that the Biden administration will charge hard down the path that all new tyrannies follow: seizing law-abiding citizens' weapons. Things will not end well if that happens.
Image: Biden ATF nominee David Chipman. Twitter screen grab.