Gun Laws & Legislation

Gun Control Spokesman Insults New Gun Owners

Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Guns and Gear Contributor
Font Size:

By Larry Keane

David Chipman was once a respected special agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. That was before he decided to peddle gun control.

Now, he’s reduced to name calling and holding his breath until he turns blue. It’s all because America’s ignoring his Chicken Little “the sky is falling” admonitions of those who dare to not believe the gun control ideas he’s selling.

Sorry, Mr. Chipman. During the past month hundreds of thousands of Americans went from indifferently listening to the gun control agenda to buying guns – to the tune of at least 2.3 million of them last month. Still, that doesn’t excuse his insults, slurs and mudslinging. The spate in gun purchases pulled back the veil and revealed gun control zealots for who they really are. They aren’t for gun safety. They’re not for the “common-sense” laws they crowed about to adoring and accommodating media. They are really about denying law-abiding Americans their fundamental civil liberties. They don’t want Americans to provide for their own safety, but would rather they live on the spoon-fed, fear-filled lies doled out by gun control groups in measured proportions, just enough to keep people kowtowed and doubting their own abilities to exercise safe and responsible firearms ownership.

Chipman, who is a Senior Policy Advisor for Giffords: Courage to Fight Gun Violence, is spending more time than ever not fighting gun violence, but gun ownership. When the surge started in gun sales at the outset of the COVD-19 health crisis, Chipman dismissed the buyers as fearful and preparing “for end times scenarios and zombie apocalypses.”

Guns For Me. Thee? Nah.

Chipman added he knew better, since he is a gun owner. The rest of America, though, doesn’t need the right to own a gun. Why, because we have Super Dave to protect us?

“If you care about your family, spend the $500 on groceries and stronger dead bolts for the exterior doors of your home,” he flippantly advised.

He wasn’t changing his tune, even after NSSF reported 2.3 million background checks were conducted for the sale of firearms in March.

“If you didn’t think you needed a gun prior to March of this year, you certainly don’t need to rush out and get one now,” Chipman added.

Mr. Chipman is no longer a special agent. So why does he need a gun for self-protection? I haven’t heard he’s sold his firearms.

Tiger King And Zombies

He wasn’t done. He laid out his 25-year career in the ATF as the basis for his firearm expertise in an interview with Cheddar, suggesting the right to keep and bear arms hinges on training and qualification tests. He said new gun owners “might think they are die-hard, ready-to-go, but unfortunately, they’re more like Tiger King and they’re putting themselves and their families in danger.”

“Secure that gun, locked and unloaded and hide it behind the cans of tuna and beef jerky that you have stored in a cabinet and only bring that out if the zombies start to appear,” he said. “Tuna and beef jerky” and “zombies” – just let those elitist comments marinate in your mind for a moment while Dave has a sip of Chardonnay.

In the same interview, Chipman painted every new gun owner as criminal domestic abusers in waiting and alcoholics. Chipman would rather denigrate new gun owners instead of pointing them to training resources they can use even if they can’t get to a range, like NSSF did with a blog titled, Practical Advice for Quarantined New Gun Owners. To be fair, Mr. Chipman can’t point new gun owners to firearm safety education and training offered by his employer because unlike NSSF they don’t have any.

Tantrums

Here’s what is really going on. There is overwhelming evidence that Americans value their ability to take responsibility for their own safety in times of uncertainty when law enforcement is spread thin, prisons are being emptied and prosecutors are refusing to prosecute criminals. Gun control advocates like Chipman, are losing their minds. They are seething mad the “unwashed masses” of the American public would dare to think for themselves, take responsibility for their safety and exercise their rights. They’re losing influence and they know it. That’s why they’re throwing fits. They know they have lost a generation of fence sitters.

Don’t go away mad, Chipman. Just go away.

Larry Keane is Senior Vice President of Government and Public Affairs and General Counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the firearms industry trade association.