President Biden plans to pull David Chipman’s nomination to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in the face of opposition from gun rights groups, Republican senators and a few Democrats.
Chipman, a former ATF agent who became a prominent gun control advocate after leaving the agency, has been ensnared in a brutal confirmation battle since Biden nominated him this spring.
With the Senate evenly divided and Republicans united in opposition, Chipman needed every Democratic and independent senator to push his nomination across the line. In the end, that didn’t happen.
On Thursday, two sources close to the matter told NPR that Biden will pull the nomination in the coming days.
The result leaves the ATF without a Senate-confirmed boss yet again. The agency hasn’t had a confirmed director in six years. It’s had only one since Congress made the position Senate approved in 2006.
It also deals a blow to Biden’s efforts to address what he calls the “epidemic” of gun violence in the United States.
The struggle to get a confirmed director on the books over the years has been due in large part to opposition from gun rights groups like the National Rifle Association.
That dynamic played out again this time. The NRA, Gun Owners of America, the National Association for Gun Rights and similar groups blasted Chipman’s nomination, calling him a threat to law-abiding gun owners.
Chipman is currently a senior policy adviser at Giffords, the gun violence prevention group started by former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was almost killed in a mass shooting in 2011.
Chipman, who says he himself owns guns, has voiced support for a ban on assault weapons and limits on high-capacity magazines.
Before he became a gun control advocate, he worked for more than two decades for the ATF, first as a special agent in the field and later in a supervisory role.
His advocacy work earned him strong support from the gun violence prevention community. But it also energized gun rights groups, who lobbied hard to try to torpedo his confirmation.
Earlier this summer, Democrats expressed confidence that they’d be able to secure the votes necessary to push Chipman through. But as the summer progressed, Chipman’s nomination ended up stuck in limbo for weeks as a few key Democrats — Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana — as well as independent Angus King of Maine remained on the fence.
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