Sen. Mike Lee took aim at President Joe Biden’s nominee to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, David Chipman, over controversial past remarks the nominee made online.
“It concerns me that you, as the nominee to be the director of the ATF, would have such a flippant and, if I may say so, utterly condescending attitude toward first-time gun owners in this country,” Lee said during Wednesday’s confirmation hearing.
Lee’s comment came after he detailed various instances in which he felt Chipman belittled gun ownership or made other “troubling” remarks on guns.
“You posted on Reddit back in 2019 when you said, ‘While at ATF, I conducted studies involving people who failed background checks to determine how many later committed crimes with a gun. Many did. This is a perfect opportunity to arrest people before committing crimes rather than responding after the fact.’ I find this statement very troubling, especially troubling for someone who’s been nominated to serve as the ATF director.”
“This violates our most fundamental rules of due process. Talking about a desire to arrest people before committing crimes rather than after the fact. It’s not how our criminal justice system works. And if that’s how you view people, that is concerning to me,” Lee added.
Lee then turned his attention to an interview Chipman gave last year, accusing the nominee of openly mocking first-time gun buyers.
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“You gave an interview with Cheddar News, and you were talking about increases in gun sales, especially first-time gun owners who had decided to purchase a gun for the first time during the pandemic,” Lee said. “In the interview, you openly mocked first-time gun owners, saying that they were ‘more like Tiger King,’ and then advising them, in quite a mockery, to hide their gun ‘behind the cans of tuna and beef jerky they have stored in a cabinet and only bring that out if the zombies start to appear.’ When I first saw this, I watched the clip and I read the clip several times, hoping that I was missing context, hoping that there was something else there that would make this less troubling.”
Lee then pointed out that many of the first-time gun owners that purchased guns in 2020 were minorities and women.
“The National Shooting Sports Foundation shows that retailers supported the highest average percent increase in sales to black Americans during the first half of 2020, with large increases also to women and to Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans as well,” Lee said. “So why would you choose to insult so many of your fellow Americans with a statement like this based on the fact that they purchased a gun?”
When asked to respond to his previous comments, Chipman said he believed the remarks had been “taken out of context.” Addressing his Reddit post, Chipman said he was advocating for stricter enforcement against people who lie on federal background checks, which is already a crime.
“What I said was that I think that in certain circumstances, it is absolutely the mission of ATF to arrest people for lying on a federal firearms form, a five-year felony,” Chipman said.
“Before committing an additional violent crime, which is something I was seeing at ATF, that people would lie and try, and then go through other means, acquire a gun and hurt someone,” Chipman added after being pressed by Lee to verify he did not mean people should be arrested before committing a crime.
In regard to mocking new gun owners, Chipman argued that he was using humor to point out that people who are new to guns should be properly trained before bringing them into their homes.
“What I was trying to use is self-deprecating humor,” Chipman said. “The person who had a gun stored behind his tuna and beef jerky was me, and I was saying that all of us were acting in new ways as a response to COVID, and I thought that people should be very clear that when they bring a gun in their home, they need to be properly trained.”
Chipman, a two-decade ATF veteran who serves as an adviser to a gun control group, has been roundly criticized by Republicans since being tapped by Biden to lead the agency.
“Many see putting a committed gun control proponent, like David Chipman, in charge of ATF is like putting a tobacco executive in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services, or antifa in charge of the Portland police department,” Sen. Chuck Grassley said of Chipman’s nomination.
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Chipman is expected to have a close nomination battle, facing close to unanimous Republican opposition. Democrats Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have told party leaders they likely plan to vote to confirm the nominee, provided his confirmation hearing goes well.
Those two votes would likely lock up the nomination for Chipman, while GOP Sens. Susan Collins and Pat Toomey have also said they have not ruled out supporting his nomination.
