Biden pick for ATF pushes back against GOP senators -- and disinformation

[rogue emissary]

May 26, 2021, 5:49 PM EDT
By Dareh Gregorian
President Joe Biden's choice to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, David Chipman, got a rough welcome Wednesday from Senate Republicans at a confirmation hearing, where he defended his statements about guns and pushed back against a social media disinformation campaign.

"Buckle your seat belt. You want to be the head of the ATF. Hang on tight. They're coming after you, buddy," Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., told Chipman at the beginning of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. "It's going to be rough at times."

Leadership of the ATF, which enforces gun laws, has become a political hot potato — the Senate has managed to confirm only one director in the last 15 years, who served in the Obama administration.

Chipman spent more than two decades with the ATF before he went to work with Giffords, a group that advocates for stricter gun laws, which is named for its founder, Gabby Giffords, a former lawmaker who was shot at a constituent event.
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https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/biden-pick-atf-pushes-back-against-gop-senators-disinformation-n1268677

Since we are unable to enact new laws. it's critical to have a confirmed head of the ATF to enforce the watered-down regulations we have on the books.

Biden going to need to fight to get him confirmed especially since Chipman is pro AR15 ban. Of course, that's Biden's administration position.

I like this guy's outlook. The GOP attacked him for the below quote.

“What we need instead is a full-time director and a fully funded agency with a proactive and aggressive approach to its mission, equipped to coordinate with other law enforcement agencies,” Chipman wrote in 2013 before the first successful confirmation of an ATF director.

more from the WP article

With Chipman’s 25 years at ATF, in which he rose through the ranks and served as an investigator of terrorist attacks in New York City and Oklahoma City in the 1990s, his supporters think he has a unique background fitted to run the somewhat rudderless agency.

He more recently served as a policy adviser at Giffords, the gun violence group founded by former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), which has lobbied for stricter gun laws such as universal background checks in firearm sales.

That has given Chipman credibility among Democrats who are looking for a more active regulatory agency.

“There’s always sort of the chill that exists on ATF’s work because without a leader to answer for any new directions they’re taking, the agency never wants to do anything that might respond to new developments, new trends or new threats. So the agency gets frozen in time,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a leader on gun issues since the 2012 mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school, said Tuesday.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/david-chipman-looks-to-become-the-second-permanent-head-of-the-atf-in-15-years/2021/05/25/bae71380-bd8d-11eb-b26e-53663e6be6ff_story.html