President Joe Biden has chosen a gun control advocate with a history of pushing for limits on guns and ammunition to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.
Biden announced David Chipman, a former ATF agent, as his pick to lead the agency last week alongside the unveiling of executive actions aimed at curbing certain kinds of firearms.
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Chipman’s past advocacy for restricting guns, however, could complicate his path to confirmation through a sharply divided Senate. His most recent employer — Giffords, part of a gun safety organization founded by Rep. Gabby Giffords — has pushed this year for stripping gun manufacturers of protection from lawsuits if their guns are used in crimes, requiring permits for the purchase of all types of guns, and limiting magazines that can hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition.
Pro-gun groups quickly panned the nomination last week.
The National Rifle Association on Friday announced its opposition, calling him a “gun control extremist.”
The Second Amendment Foundation called Biden’s selection of Chipman an “alarming development.”
“Joe Biden just nominated a man now working for the Giffords gun control lobbying group to head the agency responsible for gun law enforcement,” the group’s executive vice president, Alan Gottlieb, said in a statement. “That’s not just a bad signal to gun owners. The president has essentially raised the black flag, and we see nothing positive for American gun owners or the firearms industry.”
GUN CONTROL HISTORY
Chipman has in the past pushed for imposing restrictions on so-called assault weapons that go beyond those in the 1994 federal ban, which expired in 2004.
“If our goal is to balance the rights of responsible law-abiding gun owners and the urgent need to keep particularly dangerous weapons out of the hands of criminals, simply reinstating the ’90s-era ban on assault weapons is not enough,” Chipman said in 2019 testimony before the House Judiciary Committee.
In that testimony, Chipman argued all owners of assault weapons should be required to register their firearms with the federal government and the future production and sale of such guns should be outlawed.
Pro-gun activists argue the “assault weapon” label is often applied too broadly.
Chipman told an interviewer in 2018 that he supports regulating AR-15s, among the most popular style of firearms in America, as if they were machine guns.
The National Firearms Act in 1986 effectively banned machine guns; the only ones in private hands were manufactured before the law passed. And AR-15s function differently than machine guns, as a shooter can only fire one round per pull of the trigger.
A claim Chipman made about the 1993 siege of a religious compound in Waco, Texas, a case in which Chipman was involved during his time at the ATF, has received renewed scrutiny in light of his appointment. Chipman falsely claimed during a 2019 “Ask Me Anything” session on Reddit that firearms were used to shoot down two helicopters during the confrontation, but no helicopters were shot down in the siege.
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Chipman has also pushed for more centrist gun control policies, such as expanding background checks, so-called “red flag” laws that allow family members to report the potentially dangerous behavior of a loved one with a gun, and retaining regulations on silencers, that even some Republicans have supported.
Biden announced Chipman’s nomination while speaking about an executive action banning “ghost guns,” or guns that customers can assemble at home using a 3D printer.
