Ask and ye shall receive. Yesterday we ran Larry Keane’s op-ed calling for the feckless Biden administration to recognize reality and pull the nomination of gun control lobbyist David Chipman to run the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Today, Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post is announcing that whoever is running things in the White House has leaked that they intend to do exactly that.
From the WaPo . . .
The White House is planning to withdraw David Chipman’s nomination to run the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives this week amid bipartisan pushback over his gun control advocacy, according to two people with knowledge of the decision.
Chipman was always an audacious nomination. Biden trying to install a paid gun control lobbyist to run the nation’s federal firearms regulatory agency was every bit as ballsy as a GOP president nominating Wayne LaPierre. It was always going to provoke tooth-and-nail opposition from the other side, but the White House apparently thought they could brazen it out.
But when Chipman’s serial lies, and allegations of past racist comments came up — allegations no one has bothered to refute — the end of his nomination became only a matter of time. Even a handful of red and purple state Democrats let it be known — sometimes by saying nothing (at least publicly) — that they wouldn’t vote for him.
This is a big loss for the Civilian Disarmament Industrial Complex who got behind Chipman’s nomination with everything they had. And as they saw it gradually going down in flames, the shrieks and accusations of mendacity and dirty pool against those who worked to defeat him were glorious.
So will the administration’s next nominee be any friendlier to gun rights? Please. Will they choose someone who hasn’t openly called for regulating AR-15s like machine guns and openly disparaged law-abiding gun owners? They will if they’re smart. And if they do, whoever they pick might be just as big a threat, but more difficult to defeat.
But in nominating Chipman, Biden succeeded in getting virtually everyone on the gun rights side of the ledger to coalesce in fierce opposition to someone who was a caricature of a clownish anti-gun zealot and it was a very good thing. Now we’ll see if that kind of unity can continue in the battles ahead.
