President Joe Biden’s pick to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms and Explosives confirmed he is a radical gun-control advocate this week during his Senate confirmation hearing.
When pressed by Republican senators, David Chipman, a longtime gun-control lobbyist, admitted he supports a ban on so-called assault-style weapons.
Chipman even suggested such a ban could apply to other firearms besides the popular AR-15 hunting rifles.
During the hearing, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, pressed Chipman on his claims that the majority of Americans held anti-gun views in line with his own.
“The AR-15 is one of, if not the most popular rifle in America. It’s not a machine gun, it’s a rifle.,” Cruz said. “Your public position is that you want to ban AR-15s, is that correct?”
Chipman then acknowledged that he supported an AR-15 ban.
“The AR-15 is a gun I was issued on ATF’s S.W.A.T team, and it’s a particularly lethal weapon,” he claimed, “and regulating it—as other particularly lethal weapons—I have advocated for.”
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., then pressed Chipman to define the term “assault weapon.”
“Senator, an assault weapon would be—in the context of the question you asked—what Congress defines it as,” Chipman answered.
After Cotton asked Chipman again to define what he believes should be considered an “assault weapon,” Chipman said he would include “any semi-automatic rifle capable of accepting a detachable magazine over the caliber of .22” in his definition.
That means, as Cotton pointed out, that Chipman’s standard would “basically cover every single modern sporting rifle in America today.”
Senator @TomCottonAR asks Biden’s ATF nominee David Chipman to define an “assault weapon”:
“Any semi-automatic rifle capable of accepting a detachable magazine above the caliber of .22” pic.twitter.com/EA4NveiqKt
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) May 26, 2021
