The GOP has made no mystery of its opposition to comprehensive gun control. But if Republican lawmakers have their way, they’ll even hold up the person who’s supposed to oversee firearms regulations: David Chipman, President Joe Biden’s nominee to run the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Chipman—a longtime advocate for gun control at groups like Giffords and Everytown for Gun Safety—was nominated last week to run the ATF, where Chipman himself spent his career as an agent. If confirmed by the Senate, Chipman would be the first full-time director at the agency since 2015. He would also be the ATF director with the most ardently pro-gun control background.
Congressional Democrats are resigned to the reality that they can’t make new gun control laws. But they do believe bringing in someone like Chipman to enforce existing regulations could help tamp down America’s gun problems, which have been clearer than ever after a string of recent mass shootings, like the ones in Boulder, Colorado; Orange, California; Allen, Texas; and Rock Hill, South Carolina (all of which have happened in the past month).
ADVERTISEMENT
But as excited as Democrats are to confirm Chipman, Republicans seem just as anxious to stop him.
“He's an anti-firearms activist,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee that will hold Chipman’s confirmation hearing, told The Daily Beast. “It’s a radical nomination, and certainly not something I can imagine myself supporting.”
Hawley’s colleague on Judiciary, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), tweeted last week that Chipman was a “gun-grabber” and alleged that Chipman believes in “wild conspiracies.” Other Republicans on Judiciary, such as Texas Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, said on Tuesday they had not studied the nominee deeply but were concerned about what they had initially read.
But those sharp attacks and sounds of alarm from the GOP may all be for naught; Democrats appear poised to stick together on Chipman’s nomination.
Chipman seems to have impressed the one senator who matters most these days: Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV). The moderate lawmaker, who has opposed several gun bills backed by House Democrats, told The Daily Beast on Tuesday that “everything I know about [Chipman] is good.”
When The Daily Beast raised the concern that Republicans seem to find Chipman’s views on guns extreme, Manchin was doubtful about their opposition.
“I know that not to be true,” he said.
Manchin’s early support seems to have caught Republicans off-guard. Cornyn, who said the West Virginian’s “well-established record” on the Second Amendment made him a “potentially dispositive” vote on the nomination, sounded surprised when informed that Manchin liked Chipman. “Well,” he told The Daily Beast, “I’m sorry to hear that.”
Ultimately, Republicans may not get the votes to block Chipman, but they can draw out the process—and, potentially, use it to go on offense against Democrats representing more gun-friendly states. Already, groups like the National Rifle Association are putting pressure on lawmakers like Sen. Jon Tester of Montana and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona over the nomination in hopes of tarnishing their moderate brands.
Kelly, who faces re-election in 2022, has a unique connection to the nominee. Chipman served as a senior adviser to the gun safety group founded by former Rep. Gabby Giffords—Kelly’s wife—who was shot during a 2011 mass shooting in Arizona.
“I’ve known him for a number of years,” Kelly said of Chipman on Tuesday. “He’s well-qualified, he works hard, really cares about the country.”
But the job of ATF director has proved a vexing problem in recent years. Recent history shows how easily Republicans and the gun lobby can hold up nominees. Since 2006, a total of seven individuals have served as director on an acting basis. One of them, Ken Melson, stepped down in 2011 amid the “Fast and Furious” scandal, when an ATF anti-gun operation backfired spectacularly.
Just one person has been confirmed by the Senate as a full-time ATF director: B. Todd Jones, who was nominated by President Barack Obama and served between 2013 and 2015 before leaving to become a top official at the National Football League.
The NRA has actively opposed a number of nominees over the last 20 years—President George W. Bush’s nominee, for example, was blocked by GOP senators who cited opposition from gun dealers—and in 2006, the pro-gun group successfully lobbied Congress to make the ATF director position require Senate confirmation.
Such memories remain fresh for key lawmakers. “Law enforcement leadership needs to be steady, professional, dedicated, and I think we should stop playing political games with the ATF leadership,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), a Judiciary member and top Biden ally. He scoffed at the argument raised by Republicans that Chipman is an extremist: “A man who was a dedicated, decorated ATF agent for decades?”
Chipman has served in the agency’s ranks for 25 years, serving on a unit that functioned as the ATF’s SWAT team. He worked in Waco, Texas, in the aftermath of the infamous 1993 siege of a cult compound that ended with the deaths of 76 cultists and four ATF officers. A past claim about Waco— that the Branch Davidians shot down law enforcement helicopters with heavy firearms—is what prompted the “conspiracy theorist” claims from Republicans. It’s not true that the cult members downed helicopters—though they reportedly shot at them—but there is no conspiracy theory involving that aspect of the siege.
In retirement, Chipman found a voice as a gun control advocate, advising not just Giffords’ group, but Everytown for Gun Safety, the nonprofit founded by Michael Bloomberg. In testimony before Congress in 2019, Chipman said America’s gun violence crisis had made two things very clear: “One, it is far too easy for violent people to get their hands on violent weapons. Two, the American people overwhelmingly want Congress to act now to make their communities safer."
It’s that kind of advocacy that made Chipman an appealing choice for Biden. “As both a veteran law enforcement official and a gun owner himself, there’s no one better suited for this moment than David Chipman to help enforce our gun safety laws and protect our communities while still respecting the Second Amendment,” said Mike Gwin, a spokesperson for Biden.
Democrats find Chipman’s viewpoints even more urgent now. During the COVID-19 pandemic, gun violence rates rose along with crime and domestic violence across much of the U.S., but the Boulder shooting served as a jarring reentry to the grim cycle of mass-shooting events in the public spaces Americans are returning to.
That tragedy, and subsequent recent shootings, have reinvigorated calls on Capitol Hill for gun safety reforms that have stalled for years under partisan gridlock.
Although Democrats now control the White House, Senate, and House, the 60-vote threshold for legislation in the Senate means even meager proposals, like the expansion of background checks to purchase a firearm, are unlikely to pass anytime soon. But the 50-vote threshold for confirming nominees gives Democrats the power to confirm Chipman themselves, even if they believe Republicans should make the vote bipartisan.
“This is someone who should be confirmable and supportable by both sides,” Coons said, “given his decades of experience at the ATF and his, I think, clear-eyed position on how to work across the aisle to reduce the number of gun violence incidents in the United States.”
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he had not met yet with Chipman but is looking forward to it. “I want a real agency enforcing real laws to make this a safer country,” he told The Daily Beast.
And Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), a Judiciary member and vocal critic of the NRA, indicated that perhaps the embattled gun lobby organization—which is currently defending its bankruptcy claim in court—might not exercise the same sway it has in past fights over the ATF’s top slot.
“They all talk about how we should enforce existing laws, that's their mantra,” said Blumenthal. “But when they see a real enforcer, they seem to lack any real spine. So, I think his nomination will pass, as a test to the moral bankruptcy of the gun lobby, just as the NRA declared financial bankruptcy.”
