President Joe Biden’s nomination of David Chipman as director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives will get its first test on Thursday when the Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to vote on his confirmation.
Chipman is a veteran of the agency, charged with enforcing current gun laws on the books. Chipman said he is a firearms owner himself but has also worked in recent years with gun control groups.
The committee vote comes a day after Biden, in White House remarks, blamed rogue gun dealers for the surge in crime across the country.
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Since Chipman faced the committee last month, no Republican on the evenly divided Senate panel has indicated support for him, leaving some members to suspect his nomination could be delayed.
“I’d be surprised if any Republican would vote for him,” Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, told the Washington Examiner. “This is a very controversial, in my point of view, totally inappropriate nominee for this position.”
Chipman retired from the agency in 2012 and became a senior adviser to most major gun control organizations in the country.
Chipman told the committee last month his political views about guns would not interfere with the enforcement of present law, but Republican lawmakers were doubtful. Should Chipman’s nomination make it out of committee at any point, Republicans say one of their members will likely place a hold on it.
“Yes. I’m sure there will be a hold,” Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican and a member of the committee, told the Washington Examiner.
Sen. John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican and a fellow committee member, agreed with Cornyn, adding, “Yeah. He’s woefully unqualified.”
But those tactics would only delay the nomination, not shut it down.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, defended Biden’s pick to lead the ATF, saying that “Republicans prefer having no one in that position.”
Durbin added, “It’s been consistently vacant because the gun lobby doesn’t want anybody to enforce the laws in ATF. So, there’s bound to be resistance from the Republican side.”
Critics, however, have questioned why Biden appointed someone with an explicit activist background to a law enforcement job and if Democrats would take issue with it if President Donald Trump had appointed an NRA lobbyist to the same position.
“I don’t see it that way,” Durbin said. “And I think the ATF has a regulatory responsibility to keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people, and that’s basically what most gun safety groups want.”
Not every Democrat is fully on board with supporting Chipman just yet. And Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a centrist Republican, announced on Monday that she would not support Chipman’s nomination when it comes to the floor. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday night that he is still talking with the ATF nominee and is “undecided” about whether he would vote to confirm him.
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“I think there is a deep concern about Mr. Chipman’s nomination, and I think it is an interesting question. There are at least some Senate Democrats who tell their constituents back home they support the Second Amendment,” Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, said. “Voting to confirm a nominee who has advocated for banning millions of guns in America is not consistent with Democratic claims of supporting the Second Amendment.”
