Joe Biden Breaks Promise to Put Beto O’Rourke in Charge of Gun Control

President Joe Biden broke his 2020 promise Thursday to put former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) in charge of gun control efforts. Instead, he named gun control activist David Chipman to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.

The White House announced Chipman’s appointment as one of six executive actions that President Biden is taking on gun control, ahead of any effort to pass a bill acceptable to Congress (original emphasis):

The President will nominate David Chipman to serve as Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. ATF is the key agency enforcing our gun laws, and it needs a confirmed director in order to do the job to the best of its ability. But ATF has not had a confirmed director since 2015. Chipman served at ATF for 25 years and now works to advance commonsense gun safety laws.

That violates an explicit promise Biden made O’Rourke, in public, at the Dallas event on March 2, 2020, when the former congressman — who had long since dropped out of the presidential race — endorsed Biden.

Biden’s exact words to O’Rouke then were:

I want to make something clear. I’m going to guarantee you this is not the last you’re seeing this guy. You’re going to take care of the gun problem with me. You’re going to be the one who leads this effort. I’m counting on you. I’m counting on you. We need you badly. The state needs you. The country needs you. You’re the best.

O’Rourke was quiet Thursday about Biden’s gun control efforts, tweeting instead about Texas voting reform legislation.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.