It was no accident that Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer combined Chipman’s confirmation hearing with that of three other nominees, limiting questioning from senators to only five minutes. The former agent has a long history of hyperbolic claims and outright falsehoods.
Though Chipman told the Senate Judiciary Committee he believes District of Columbia v. Heller codified the Second Amendment as an individual right — a view that isn’t shared by his bosses at Giffords — he’s had a weird way of showing it.
In his writing, Chipman has framed gun ownership as a collective right. He still advocates for a complete ban on the country’s most popular semiautomatic rifles — guns that Heller would certainly classify as “in common use” by law-abiding citizens. Chipman advocates for policy that would compel millions of existing AR-15 owners who have already gone through background checks to register their weapons with the federal government — a prerequisite to gun confiscation. …
But Chipman has not only proven antagonistic toward existing gun laws but law-abiding gun owners as well. During the COVID pandemic, the former agent urged American governors to unilaterally shut down gun shops, noting that “people who hoarded the guns might decide six months from now — once they see no zombies around, but they’ve run out of tuna and beef jerky — that they need the money to buy food.” When speaking about the recent spike in first-time gun ownership, Chipman compared buyers to the meth-smoking criminal Joe Exotic of Netflix fame — “they might think that they’re die-hard, ready to go, but unfortunately they’re more like Tiger King, and they’re putting themselves and their family in danger.”
— National Review Editors in David Chipman Is Unfit to Lead the ATF
