What do the ATF, CDC, and Taliban have in Common?

From the mass arming of terrorists in Afghanistan to having the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) play the "public health" card against the Second Amendment, Washington, D.C. has been busy finding creative new ways to arm the most dangerous criminals in the world while striving to deprive law-abiding citizens of their God-given right to keep and bear arms. Even as the Taliban is gifted with billions of dollars worth of military-grade weapons overseas, the ATF is proposing rule changes that would egregiously violate Second Amendment rights at home, inspiring many to notice that the ATF, CDC, and Taliban actually have a lot in common when it comes to "gun control". The silver lining in the middle of this otherwise ugly situation is the way that these moves against freedom are inspiring serious pushback that is spreading like wildfire across the country.

David Chipman Nomination Circling the Drain?

Since President Biden announced his intention to nominate David Chipman as Director of the ATF back in early April and formally sent that nomination to the Senate on April 12th, the Chipman campaign has taken on a lot of water, slowly at first, and now in torrents.

As a former ATF agent and senior policy advisor for the Giffords gun control group, Chipman is something of a legend for his extreme anti-Second Amendment zealotry. His passion for unapologetically using the strong arm of government to crush and kill is highlighted by his justification of the 1993 ATF raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, in which at least 82 people, including many innocent children, unnecessarily had their lives taken by the federal government.

When testifying before the Democrat-controlled Senate on May 26th, Chipman claimed to have not been in Waco at the time, but he still supports the actions that led to the massacre. At the time, it seemed the Senate was fast-tracking Chipman through the confirmation process and into the captain's chair at ATF. However, his total inability to define the "assault weapons" that he proposed banning was a major misstep. It's been mostly downhill since then.

The Chipman nomination has been taking serious hits since at least July, when corroborated complaints of racist behavior during Chipman's earlier stint at ATF surfaced. Shortly after that revelation, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) called on President Biden to withdraw Chipman's nomination, a call that he repeated in early August in light of additional revelations regarding Chipman's failure to disclose an interview with a Chinese-run propaganda network. There are also allegations that Chipman lost one of his issued weapons, which would make him one of the hundreds of ATF agents to have accidentally armed criminals, not counting the hundreds of agents who have purposefully armed criminals. By August, key Senators began shifting away from Chipman, with Angus King of Maine, an Independent who caucuses with Democrats, signaling that he is opposed to the nomination. Since the Senate began shifting away from Chipman, additional credible claims of his racism were made by a black ATF agent, which prompted Iowa Senator and ranking Senate Judiciary Member Chuck Grassley to demand the release of reports dealing with allegations of racism on the part of Chipman. These are the latest waves to crash over the Biden nominee, leaving many "experts" to wonder if Chipman has any real chance left and many freedom-loving Americans hoping that the answer is no.

However, until his nomination is withdrawn, we should remain vigilant and keep holding senators' feet to the fire.

Remembering What Gun Control is... and What It is Not

With the likes of Chipman, the ATF, and the Taliban attracting so much well-deserved scrutiny, we have a golden opportunity to remind ourselves and others of the true nature of "gun control". While gun control activists like Chipman prefer to paint themselves as heroes committed to the removal of dangerous things from society, they are not actually interested in removing weapons from the land. Not at all. Truth be told, they love guns. Chipman himself pointed this out in a Texas interview, in which he laughed at the idea that his boss, Gabby Giffords, hated guns, remarking that she had recently attended the christening of a naval warship named in her honor, which was "covered with guns." Furthermore, her husband, Mark Kelly, used to pilot fighter jets equipped with guns and heavy ordnance.

Gun control advocates like Chipman, Giffords, and Kelly want weapons like that to play a vital role in our communities, culture, and civilization. The role that they want these deadly efficient weapons to play is one of enabling total government control by giving the State a monopoly on violence.

Gun control is not about eliminating deadly weapons from society. Gun control is about removing power from people who might defend themselves from any number of threats, including a tyrannical government. For those interested in better understanding why an intelligent citizen might want the tools to defend themselves from a tyrannical government, the term "democide" is a good place to start. Dr. R.J. Rummell, a professor at Yale University and the University of Hawai'i, coined the term, defining it as "the murder of any person or people by government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder." Like at Ruby Ridge and Waco.