UPDATED on 9/9/21

David Chipman is originally from an affluent suburb of Detroit, Michigan. He received his Bachelor of Science from American University and a Master’s degree from Johns Hopkins. During his 25 years as a special agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), Chipman concentrated on monitoring firearms trafficked from Virginia to New York. During Dave’s ATF stint, he played a prominent role in the assault on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, from Feb. 28 to April 19, 1993.

After leaving the ATF, Chipman became a lobbyist for New York billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety and, later, a senior policy advisor at Giffords. “Now I work with former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords [and her husband, Democratic Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly] to save lives from gun violence,” he said in a 2021 interview.

Some More on Giffords

Giffords’ single election and legislative agenda is “to elect candidates who will fight for our safety — not gun lobby profits.” The organization claims to defend lifesaving gun laws as well as prove “the gun lobby’s dangerous arguments” false. Giffords, co-founded by Sen. Kelly, filed a brief in the landmark Second Amendment case District of Columbia v. Heller. Giffords argued that, “The Second Amendment does not limit the options available to cities to address the problem of gun violence.”

Giffords claims gun violence is a public health issue and thus the District’s complete ban on handguns by citizens is constitutional. The gun-control-advocacy group maintains that American citizens have no individual right to a gun. Its Law Center website boasts that the group filed the above brief to argue “the right to possess a firearm is not based on an individual right of self-defense but rather to service in a militia based on the prefatory language in the Amendment.”

And now, President Joe Biden has nominated Chipman to be director of the ATF, and Giffords says Dave is the “perfect choice” for that post.

Why David Chipman for ATF?

One of the current administration’s focuses is to implement extreme gun-control measures. Thus, Biden has ordered the ATF to develop and implement restrictive new regulations that will severely impact the right of American citizens to freely exercise their constitutional rights as guaranteed by the Second Amendment.

And Chipman has no qualms with that.

In 2017, he said, “Anyone who has worked in law enforcement for as long as I have will tell you that silencers were not designed to protect hearing. They were designed to make it difficult for people to identify the sound of gunfire and locate active shooters.”

In a 2020 Reddit “Ask Me Anything” interview, Chipman responded, “I believe we should ban the future production and sale [of AR-15 rifles] to civilians and afford current owners of these firearms the ability to license these particular guns with ATF under the National Firearms Act.”

According to a statement by the NRA, Chipman’s views on the Second Amendment and his work as a gun prohibitionist should disqualify him from serving as director of the ATF. If you don’t think Dave and Joe want to cancel your right to hunt, shoot and carry — openly or concealed — think again.

UPDATE: 

The White House has withdrawn Chipman’s nomination to head the ATF as of Thursday, September 9. The ATF hasn’t had a Senate-confirmed leader in the last six years and has only had one confirmed head since Congress made the position subject to Senate confirmation.