In a great win for the Second Amendment Joe Biden has withdrawn David Chipman as his nominee for the director’s position of the ATF. With the withdraw Biden made a few comments, one of which was this:
“He would have been an exemplary Director of the ATF and would have redoubled its efforts to crack down on illegal firearms traffickers and help keep our communities safe from gun violence. Unfortunately, Republicans in Congress have made clear that they intend to use gun crime as a political talking point instead of taking serious steps to address it.” -Joe Biden
There’s a handful of things to dissect here on why it’s a good thing that Chipman was withdrawn as the nominee for everyone in the country; including gun control advocates.
- Chipman had a clear and open bias against civilian ownership of firearms. This bias is made clear by the fact that he was a high ranking member of the Gifford’s Group, a group that is adamantly anti-gun. A leader of any government agency shouldn’t have an open bias against the industry they are going to be regulating. They should be as unbias, level headed, and open minded as possible.
An analogy to this would be putting the Pope in charge of Planned Parenthood and then allowing the Pope to make every major call Planned Parenthood would ever make.
- Chipman lied to senate and the American people when he stated that he had no conflict of interest were he to be nominated to the director position of the ATF. He actually did have a major conflict of interest when first nominated; his wife was the division chief in the ATF’s public affairs office. She was put on a fast tracked retirement process and left the agency in July; this was done in haste hoping that the conflict of interest didn’t show up.
To put this in perspective, having David Chipman as the ATF director, and his wife the division chief of the ATF’s public affairs office is like going to work at a factory where the only other people hired are family members of the manager. Every time something goes on, no blame will ever befall your coworkers, only you… because you’re an outsider and thus an easy scapegoat.
- David Chipman is a racist. It has been corroborated that during his time in the ATF David Chipman said,
“Hey, a lot of African Americans qualified to be promoted on this certification list; they must have been cheating.”
After saying this, Chipman went on to find one of these newly promoted agents, and had an investigation performed that cleared the ATF Agent who has chosen to remain anonymous.Is an explanation of this one really necessary on why it’s a bad thing?
All in all, it’s fantastic that David Chipman will not be being confirmed as the director of the BATFE, however, that doesn’t mean that he won’t be being placed in a high ranking position within the agency; which is just as bad.