The Witch is Dead!
Biden administration withdraws nomination of David Chipman to head ATF
The witch is dead! President Biden has withdrawn David Chipman as his nominee to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). After a protracted nomination process, the votes simply were not there to confirm Chipman. Defeating this nomination was a huge win for all Americans.
ATF is a highly politicized agency and has been so for a very long time. So much so that the Senate has confirmed only one nominee in the past fifteen years. The stated mission of the ATF is as follows:
· The ATF protects the public from crimes involving firearms, explosives, arson, and the diversion of alcohol and tobacco products; regulates lawful commerce in firearms and explosives; and provides worldwide support to law enforcement, public safety, and industry partners.
The reality is that the ATF spends more time harassing law-abiding gun owners and firearms related businesses than pursuing criminals. The Biden administration threatened to use the ATF as another tool to attack the rights of all Americans. Preventing Chipman from heading that agency greatly diminished that threat.
Those not familiar with David Chipman can get up to speed here. Chipman is an anti-Second Amendment (2A) lunatic. He spent 25 years at ATF participating in horrendous failures such as Waco. It’s not so much that he participated in Waco but that to this day he tells delusional stories defending the actions of the ATF that day. He wants to ban AR-15 style rifles. He refers to them as “assault rifles” yet he was unable to define the term assault rifle for Senators. Chipman is a lunatics lunatic.
After leaving ATF Chipman joined the Giffords gun-control group as a senior policy advisor. You would think that being a senior policy advisor for an extremist anti-Second Amendment group would disqualify Chipman as a choice to head ATF. But in the mind of the man who brought us the glorious Afghanistan pullout he was the perfect choice.
Fortunately, enough Senators thought otherwise. After barely clearing the Senate Judiciary Committee in a party line vote, the nomination stalled in the Senate. Republicans that don’t even pretend to support the values that Republicans pretend to support wouldn’t vote for Chipman (Collins, Murkowsky, Romney). Unable to sway weak Republicans the Democrats were left to depend on Senator Angus King of Maine, an independent who normally votes with Democrats. But even King couldn’t support Chipman.
In the end Americans dodged a bullet. Putting an anti-gun extremist crackpot in charge of the agency that regulates firearms should seem like a bad idea to clear thinking Americans. Even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., tweeted "Absurd that a vocal opponent of Americans' constitutional rights was ever picked to run ATF". What a day.
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©2021 Joseph T Drammissi
This article and more of Joe’s work covering the Second Amendment and other topics can be found on Substack at
This article and more of Joe’s work covering the Second Amendment and other topics can be found on Substack at