11 Examples of Defensive Gun Use That Bid Good Riddance to Biden’s ATF Nominee – Heritage.org

President Joe Biden last weekwithdrew his nominationof prominent gun control activist David Chipman to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Bidens move came aftermonths of bipartisan concernover Chipmans advocacy of severely restrictive gun control measures, his controversial statements appearing to mock new gun owners, andallegations of racist conductduring his time as an ATF agent.

Many gun control advocacy groups lamented Bidens decision, but the withdrawal of Chipmans nomination is a big step toward ensuring that the Second Amendment is protected from anti-gun bureaucrats who treat it as an antiquated, second-class right.

The reality is that the right to keep and bear arms is vital in a free republic where the government cant or wont always be there to enforce citizens individual rights against criminals.

Almost every major study on the issue has found that Americans use their firearms in self-defense between500,000 and 3 million timesa year, according to a 2013 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For this reason, The Daily Signal each month publishes an article highlighting some of the previous months many news stories on defensive gun use that you may have missedor that might not have made it to the national spotlight in the first place. (Read accountsherefrom 2019, 2020, and so far this year.)

The examples below represent only a small portion of the news stories on defensive gun use that we found in August. You may explore more by using The Heritage Foundations interactiveDefensive Gun Use Database.

Government officialsespecially unelected, unaccountable bureaucratsought not to be in the business of restricting Americans enumerated rights and mocking those who choose to exercise those rights for the first time.

Broadly imposed and highly restrictive gun control measures such as those supported by Chipman would not make a single innocent person in the circumstances above any safer from violent threats to their lives and liberties.

But Chipmans preferred policies and government-sanctioned scorn for their gun ownership may well have acted as barriers to the one thing that actually kept them safethe lawful exercise of their Second Amendment rights.

This piece originally appeared in The Daily Signal

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11 Examples of Defensive Gun Use That Bid Good Riddance to Biden's ATF Nominee - Heritage.org