Chipman Goes Down As State-Level Resistance Rises

Chipman Goes Down As State-Level Resistance Rises

President Biden's withdrawal of gun-control zealot David Chipman's nomination for head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) was welcome news to those of us who cherish the God-given right to keep and bear arms. As we covered earlier, Chipman had been taking on water since July and went from having the wind at his back in May to facing a steep uphill battle by the end of August. After key Democrat senators, Joe Manchin (WV) and Jon Tester (MT), joined independent Angus King (ME) in expressing serious concerns over Chipman, Biden was finally forced to pull the plug.

It's worth noting that Chipman's nomination failed because Democrats could not unify in support of his nomination— a straight party-line vote would have gotten him across the finish line. While Republicans were united in opposition, there was nothing that they could do to stop Chipman without Democrats crossing party lines to join in rejecting him. The fact that Democrats did so says a lot about the extreme nature of Chipman's nomination.

Also, Open Source Defense has made an excellent case that the most effective opposition to Chipman's appointment came from one guy, Stephen Gutowski, and the reporting from his one-man publication The Reload. Gutowski managed to find and publish the facts that Democratic senators would be most likely respond to, revealing significant cracks in the unified front that Chuck Schumer has tried to present.

Pushback Against D.C. Intensifies on Multiple Fronts

Meanwhile, as Chipman was circling the drain in D.C., state-level resistance to Washington's assault on the Second Amendment picked up steam. Here in Tennessee, State Representative Clay Doggett was joined by 37 additional representatives and five state senators in letters sent to Governor Bill Lee and Attorney General Herbert Slatery, calling on them to take a stand and defend the Second Amendment rights of Tennesseans. This call to action came in response to two new rule changes proposed by the ATF.

The letters to Governor Lee and Attorney General Slatery describe the ATF's proposed rule changes as posing a "looming threat to our God-given rights" and warned that the "creation of law by agency regulation sets a dangerous and unlawful precedent." The letters closed by requesting that the governor and attorney general "refuse to enforce such arbitrary and illegal rulings" and that they "activate the legal means and law enforcement powers of this state as necessary to prevent the ATF from providing for its own enforcement of such criminal measures within the state of Tennessee."

The letters describe proposed rule 86 FR 27720, Definition of "Frame or Receivers" and Identification of Firearms, as "a clear construction of a national gun registry forbidden by federal law" and noted that, "In August, twenty-seven members of congress explained how the rule will lead to mandatory registration: 'First, by declaring numerous non-firearm gun parts to be firearms which must then be serialized and transferred... after a background check; second, by requiring homemade firearms to be serialized and registered whenever they come into the hands of an FFL; and third, by requiring dealers to keep all of these records in perpetuity, or else transfer them to ATF for scanning and digitization into the agency's centralized database.' This is not a simple mistake but a deliberate contravention of the clear will of Congress by using a definition of 'receiver' that was removed from federal law more than fifty years ago."

The other proposed rule change (86 FR 30826, Factoring Criteria for Firearms with Attached "Stabilizing Braces") is described in the letters as bringing "many AR-15 pistols under the National Firearms Act (NFA), turning millions of Americans into felons by agency decree. The rule does not include a grandfather clause to allow those who already possess such weapons to continue to do so legally. By threatening to tax items in private possession that were purchased by lawful means, the regulation runs afoul of Article 1, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution." The letters go on to note that in June 48 U.S. senators wrote that the ATF is, "merely covering its retroactive gun grab with a patina of administrative process," and said this rule, "would constitute the largest executive branch-imposed gun registration and confiscation scheme in American history."

Full text of these proposed rule changes can be found at federalregister.gov.

Representative Doggett joined Isaac Botkin for a TREX TALK last Wednesday to discuss the letter and related issues. You can find that discussion here.

President Biden's Vaccine Decree Takes Things to Eleven

As if the ATF's attack on the Second Amendment wasn't enough tyrannical overreach, President Biden decided to kick things up a few notches last week by announcing that he plans to use the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to create a rule that would require private businesses with 100 or more employees to require vaccination. This decree has inspired even more state-level resistance, as most state governors and/or attorneys general have come out in opposition to the move, promising to take legal action. The first lawsuit was filed on Tuesday by Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich.

Perhaps even more significantly, this federal attempt to mandate vaccines in private businesses has inspired many state-level representatives and senators to call for emergency or special legislative sessions to combat the increasingly brazen acts of the executive branch of government. Depending on whose analysis you read, Biden's handlers have either accidentally kicked the hornet's nest too far or are deliberately maneuvering everyone towards a showdown.

Don't Take the Bait

While the mass awakening to the increasingly tyrannical nature of D.C. is a good thing, it's vital that we properly oppose the current corruption in our nation. Now more than ever, we have to master our emotions and refrain from unwise and counterproductive action. To that end, we recommend checking out two recent video messages posted by Doug Wilson: Don't Take the Bait and Don't Take the Bait, Part Dos.

With the swelling tide of pushback against an abusive federal government, the abusers running the show in Washington are desperate for anything they could use to justify more draconian crackdowns on mainstream patriotic Americans, who they now officially categorize as a potential "Domestic Terrorism Threat". There's nothing they'd like more than for something like tomorrow's "Justice for J6" event in D.C. to go sideways (or worse).

The media and current administration are desperate for that sort of ammunition and will do whatever they can to lure us into giving it to them.

Don't take the bait.