David Chipman, Biden’s gun-grabbing pick to lead the ATF, defended the massacre at Waco in an AMA post on Reddit, by falsely claiming that Branch Davidians shot down helicopters.
Chipman, who served in the ATF for 25 years as a special agent, and currently works as a senior policy advisor for the anti-Second Amendment group Giffords, was nominated by Biden to lead the agency as the director. In 2019, Chipman made an “Ask Me Anything” post on Reddit in 2019. When Redditors posed Chipman hard questions, such as asking him if there was any actual hard evidence that firearms proliferation among normal citizens was an actual causal factor in gun violence, Chipman resorted to flat out lies.
After repeatedly bringing up .50 caliber rifles, which are barely used to commit crimes in the United States, Chipman claimed that at the Waco massacre in 1993, where the actions of ATF agents led to the deaths of 82 men, women, and children, “cult members used 2 .50 caliber Barretts to shoot down two Texas Air National Guard helicopters.”
However, this simply wasn’t true. As the Daily Caller noted, “while the Branch Davidians did reportedly shoot at and damage a trio of helicopters that were flown over their compound, none were shot down, and no federal agents were injured.” A House report from 1996 reads that the helicopters “sustained damage from weapons fire, [but] none of the National Guard crews or ATF aboard were injured.”
In the thread, Chipman called for many restrictions on firearms, including arguing that “all gun sales should be limited to licensed gun stores where a background check and paperwork is required,” and that there should be a ban on production on sales of all assault rifles. This is despite the fact that he admitted carrying a concealed firearm sometimes in public.
Gun rights groups slammed Chipman as Biden’s ATF pick. Speaking to Fox News, the Gun Owners of America Vice President Erich Pratt said that the organisation is “shocked at the brazen decision to nominate a registered anti-gun lobbyist” to be the director of the ATF:
David Chipman’s anti-constitutional lobbying career clearly disqualifies him from holding public office… Joe Biden knows he cannot beat gun owners in Congress. Instead, he’s circumventing the legislative process to impose his own tyrannical [vision] by executive fiat.
“David Chipman has been on the leading edge of ATF scandals for decades, all the way back to Waco, and now he shills for gun confiscation with Gun Control Inc.,” said Dudley Brown, the President for the National Association for Gun Rights. “Chipman has embraced every hair-brained gun control scheme proposed, so of course Biden and Harris chose him. He’ll fit right in with their corrupt administration,” Brown added.
Will Fite, regional director for the NAGR, even posted a photo on Twitter of a man he identifies as Chipman, “standing on the rubble and ashes of the Americans the ATF burned alive in Waco.”
This is the man who Joe Biden just nominated to lead the ATF standing on the rubble and ashes of the Americans the ATF burned alive in Waco. pic.twitter.com/j9jttOQTlT
— Will Fite (@WillFiteForYou) April 8, 2021