FA+
Shop
Who is David Chipman and why should you care?
4 years ago
General
In eternity, where there is no time, nothing can grow. Nothing can become. Nothing changes. So death created time to grow the things that it would kill and you are reborn but into the same life that you've always been born into.
For those in the U.S. who have been living under a rock, have had more pressing issues on their mind, or just aren't generally concerned with the make up of various federal agencies, you may not know or care much about the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (BATFE or typically just ATF) or about who David Chipman is or what the significance of his appointment as head of the ATF is and why it's being fought so hard. What you may have noticed is that a lot of people who seem to have particularly strong opinions about his appointment to this agency either grew up in the 90's, or they were already adults at that time. I'm also going to warn you right now, there's going to be a lot of moral and legal gray as we dive into what the problems are with this agency and this particular individual. It is not a pleasant history, it's extremely violent with the most disgusting levels of both incompetence and malice.
To start off, we'll need to go back...fuck me, thirty years? It's been thirty fucking years?! Okay, twenty-nine years, but fuck me. Okay, sorry feeling my age a bit there. Okay we have to go back to the month of August in the Year of Our Lord Nineteen-Hundred and Ninety-Two (1992 for those of you who got thrown off). At that time, a standoff took place in a remote area of Idaho called Ruby Ridge. I won't go through every detail about what happened there, but the key points that you need to know is that in the midst of a legal battle between a former Army Special Forces operator named Randy Weaver and the ATF, numerous federal agencies, including the US Marshalls, FBI, and ATF attempted a raid on his property that ultimately left Randy's wife and son dead. This is the incident that tends to draw the most mistrust of the ATF because a Judge ruled that the entire legal battle and ensuing incident occurred because of an act of entrapment committed by the ATF. Undercover ATF agents had harassed Weaver relentlessly until he agreed to cut down the barrel of a shotgun for them, after which they arrested him and tried to make him turn informant. He refused so the legal battle ensued. The only other major piece of information is that no federal agents suffered any legal consequences from this incident that left one child dead.
That was very nearly the end of the ATF. It really should have been. But here's a question for you: How do you make a cult leader who was known to have sex with minors, keep an armory of weapons, and preach the coming of an apocalypse a more sympathetic figure than the police trying to bring him in?
"Operation Showtime"...yes, that's really what it was called. Anyways, the operation kicked off when the Branch Davidians caught onto the fact that one of their members was either an informant or an undercover agent and they expelled him from the compound. What's important to note is that cults are a particularly tricky group to deal with legally, even in ideal situations, so the standard operating procedure is usually to target the cult leader, apprehend them, and then the cult itself just kind of exists. David Koresh was known to leave the compound frequently, giving the ATF plenty of opportunities to arrest him. As the name of the operation indicates, though, they wanted to make a big show of bringing him in. What resulted was one of the ugliest messes that served to radicalize more people than ever.
The siege at Waco lasted 51 days, with the ATF and FBI bringing in armored vehicles to tear down walls in the compound so that tear gas and other such things could be delivered into the compound. These federal agencies did this knowing that there were children inside who were being victimized by Koresh. To this day, nobody knows for sure how the fire started. The remaining Branch Davidians continue to blame the feds, the feds insist that someone, likely Koresh himself, intentionally started the fire. A total of 82 people were killed inside the compound, with a majority of that number being children. This incident also served to radicalize more people and none other than Timothy McVeigh was watching the events unfold. He would go on to plan and execute the Oklahoma City Bombing which was, until 9/11, the worst terrorist attack committed on American soil.
We're going to visit another ATF goat fuck soon, but now we have to discuss what this all has to do with David Chipman and Biden appointing him as head of the ATF. Starting off, Chipman was verifiably present at Waco. Accounts differ and there is a controversy regarding a now-infamous photo supposedly of him posing in tactical gear in front of the smoldering remains of the compound (worth noting the remains of dead cultists can be seen as well). Chipman denies it's him in the photo, so I won't speculate past that point. It doesn't matter if it's him in the photo or not, because even by his own admission he was present at the site at some point (after the siege had ended, according to him), so it doesn't matter if he just handed a folder to somebody on the site, anyone who was at that place at that time has a black mark on their resume.
The more disturbing thing is that Chipman attempted an "Ask Me Anything" on reddit. It was an absolute shit show thanks to Chipman's deep biases showing through, his lack of understanding on the subject of firearms (which the head of the ATF should be very familiar with), but most importantly is that he verifiably lied about very serious details concerning the siege at Waco. The main thing he lied about was his claim that a helicopter was shot down by two Branch Davidians using Barrett .50 BMG rifles. No such rifles were ever found at the compound and the helicopters were shot at using smaller rifle calibers, but safely retreated and landed. He tried to double down on his claim by claiming that, while .50 BMG rifles are a favorite of violent criminals (they're not, they are heavy, expensive to buy in the first place, and the ammo for it is expensive as well). He then tried to claim that trafficking guns from America to Cartels south of the border is an ongoing problem. Unfortunately, this brings us to one of the ATF most recent shit shows.
"Operation Fast and Furious" was an attempt by the ATF, along with then-AG Eric Holder, to track firearms bought and transported across borders to be used in violent crimes by criminal organizations, namely cartels. Nothing about this operation was a good idea. The way they attempted to do this was to get gun store owners, clerks, etc. to allow suspected straw purchases to go through. For those who don't know, a straw purchase is when someone attempts to buy a firearm on behalf of another person who may or will not pass a background check. It is illegal, but difficult to enforce a lot of times. That said, there are some notable tells that salespeople have learned to pick up on. When the owners and salespeople voiced their discomfort in allowing straw purchases to be made, the ATF threatened to revoke their FFLs. The ATF lost track of these firearms almost immediately until police and military in Mexico recovered them after they had been found on cartel members who had either been captured or killed. Holder and the ATF attempted to take a moral high ground on the matter, but the public became aware of the details of Fast and Furious. Again, no ATF agents or other people in authority of this op were held accountable in any way.
Finally, we have Chipman's own background and biases. Aside from the ATF, he has also worked with the Giffords Gun Safety campaign, which is pretty staunchly anti-gun. This is as big a problem as it would be to place someone who was involved in the NRA as the head of the ATF. People with involvement in lobbying groups have a clear conflict of interest when working in a federal agency that's required to objectively regulate and enforce gun laws. He's been openly supportive of an "Assault Weapons" Ban, but he couldn't/wouldn't define what an "Assault Weapon" is at the recent congressional hearing that he was the subject of.
This all culminates in one serious issue that's been a major focus of the past year: in the wake of widespread police violence, President Biden has appointed a particularly heavy-handed individual to head a federal agency that is infamous in the way it handles its investigations and other policing activities. This agency will attempt to rewrite regulations on a whim, recently attempting to do so only after they attempted to seize property from manufacturers who were following the law simply because the people in charge of the ATF didn't like the regulations as-written anymore. This is an agency that has been directly involved in the murders of children. Biden has shown that he truly does not care about police violence by appointing this man, who has lied about major things, as the head of this organization.
Don't take my word for any of this though. Do your own research, there is more than enough information and evidence out there. If you do the research and find the notion of this person leading this agency to be horrifying and dangerous, please contact your Senator and tell them you don't want David Chipman appointed as head of the ATF.
To start off, we'll need to go back...fuck me, thirty years? It's been thirty fucking years?! Okay, twenty-nine years, but fuck me. Okay, sorry feeling my age a bit there. Okay we have to go back to the month of August in the Year of Our Lord Nineteen-Hundred and Ninety-Two (1992 for those of you who got thrown off). At that time, a standoff took place in a remote area of Idaho called Ruby Ridge. I won't go through every detail about what happened there, but the key points that you need to know is that in the midst of a legal battle between a former Army Special Forces operator named Randy Weaver and the ATF, numerous federal agencies, including the US Marshalls, FBI, and ATF attempted a raid on his property that ultimately left Randy's wife and son dead. This is the incident that tends to draw the most mistrust of the ATF because a Judge ruled that the entire legal battle and ensuing incident occurred because of an act of entrapment committed by the ATF. Undercover ATF agents had harassed Weaver relentlessly until he agreed to cut down the barrel of a shotgun for them, after which they arrested him and tried to make him turn informant. He refused so the legal battle ensued. The only other major piece of information is that no federal agents suffered any legal consequences from this incident that left one child dead.
That was very nearly the end of the ATF. It really should have been. But here's a question for you: How do you make a cult leader who was known to have sex with minors, keep an armory of weapons, and preach the coming of an apocalypse a more sympathetic figure than the police trying to bring him in?
"Operation Showtime"...yes, that's really what it was called. Anyways, the operation kicked off when the Branch Davidians caught onto the fact that one of their members was either an informant or an undercover agent and they expelled him from the compound. What's important to note is that cults are a particularly tricky group to deal with legally, even in ideal situations, so the standard operating procedure is usually to target the cult leader, apprehend them, and then the cult itself just kind of exists. David Koresh was known to leave the compound frequently, giving the ATF plenty of opportunities to arrest him. As the name of the operation indicates, though, they wanted to make a big show of bringing him in. What resulted was one of the ugliest messes that served to radicalize more people than ever.
The siege at Waco lasted 51 days, with the ATF and FBI bringing in armored vehicles to tear down walls in the compound so that tear gas and other such things could be delivered into the compound. These federal agencies did this knowing that there were children inside who were being victimized by Koresh. To this day, nobody knows for sure how the fire started. The remaining Branch Davidians continue to blame the feds, the feds insist that someone, likely Koresh himself, intentionally started the fire. A total of 82 people were killed inside the compound, with a majority of that number being children. This incident also served to radicalize more people and none other than Timothy McVeigh was watching the events unfold. He would go on to plan and execute the Oklahoma City Bombing which was, until 9/11, the worst terrorist attack committed on American soil.
We're going to visit another ATF goat fuck soon, but now we have to discuss what this all has to do with David Chipman and Biden appointing him as head of the ATF. Starting off, Chipman was verifiably present at Waco. Accounts differ and there is a controversy regarding a now-infamous photo supposedly of him posing in tactical gear in front of the smoldering remains of the compound (worth noting the remains of dead cultists can be seen as well). Chipman denies it's him in the photo, so I won't speculate past that point. It doesn't matter if it's him in the photo or not, because even by his own admission he was present at the site at some point (after the siege had ended, according to him), so it doesn't matter if he just handed a folder to somebody on the site, anyone who was at that place at that time has a black mark on their resume.
The more disturbing thing is that Chipman attempted an "Ask Me Anything" on reddit. It was an absolute shit show thanks to Chipman's deep biases showing through, his lack of understanding on the subject of firearms (which the head of the ATF should be very familiar with), but most importantly is that he verifiably lied about very serious details concerning the siege at Waco. The main thing he lied about was his claim that a helicopter was shot down by two Branch Davidians using Barrett .50 BMG rifles. No such rifles were ever found at the compound and the helicopters were shot at using smaller rifle calibers, but safely retreated and landed. He tried to double down on his claim by claiming that, while .50 BMG rifles are a favorite of violent criminals (they're not, they are heavy, expensive to buy in the first place, and the ammo for it is expensive as well). He then tried to claim that trafficking guns from America to Cartels south of the border is an ongoing problem. Unfortunately, this brings us to one of the ATF most recent shit shows.
"Operation Fast and Furious" was an attempt by the ATF, along with then-AG Eric Holder, to track firearms bought and transported across borders to be used in violent crimes by criminal organizations, namely cartels. Nothing about this operation was a good idea. The way they attempted to do this was to get gun store owners, clerks, etc. to allow suspected straw purchases to go through. For those who don't know, a straw purchase is when someone attempts to buy a firearm on behalf of another person who may or will not pass a background check. It is illegal, but difficult to enforce a lot of times. That said, there are some notable tells that salespeople have learned to pick up on. When the owners and salespeople voiced their discomfort in allowing straw purchases to be made, the ATF threatened to revoke their FFLs. The ATF lost track of these firearms almost immediately until police and military in Mexico recovered them after they had been found on cartel members who had either been captured or killed. Holder and the ATF attempted to take a moral high ground on the matter, but the public became aware of the details of Fast and Furious. Again, no ATF agents or other people in authority of this op were held accountable in any way.
Finally, we have Chipman's own background and biases. Aside from the ATF, he has also worked with the Giffords Gun Safety campaign, which is pretty staunchly anti-gun. This is as big a problem as it would be to place someone who was involved in the NRA as the head of the ATF. People with involvement in lobbying groups have a clear conflict of interest when working in a federal agency that's required to objectively regulate and enforce gun laws. He's been openly supportive of an "Assault Weapons" Ban, but he couldn't/wouldn't define what an "Assault Weapon" is at the recent congressional hearing that he was the subject of.
This all culminates in one serious issue that's been a major focus of the past year: in the wake of widespread police violence, President Biden has appointed a particularly heavy-handed individual to head a federal agency that is infamous in the way it handles its investigations and other policing activities. This agency will attempt to rewrite regulations on a whim, recently attempting to do so only after they attempted to seize property from manufacturers who were following the law simply because the people in charge of the ATF didn't like the regulations as-written anymore. This is an agency that has been directly involved in the murders of children. Biden has shown that he truly does not care about police violence by appointing this man, who has lied about major things, as the head of this organization.
Don't take my word for any of this though. Do your own research, there is more than enough information and evidence out there. If you do the research and find the notion of this person leading this agency to be horrifying and dangerous, please contact your Senator and tell them you don't want David Chipman appointed as head of the ATF.
DireWolf505
~direwolf505
He's just not the right guy. He's not a middle-grounder, he's a liar, and uninformed.
