An hour-long Pacific Northwest public television program that explores gun rights and crime aired in August and featured Alan Gottlieb, founder and executive vice president Alan Gottlieb, and TheGunMag.copm Senior Editor Dave Workman.
Produced by KCTS in Seattle, the Public Matters program also featured pro-gun Washington State Sen. Pam Roach, radio commentators John Carlson with KOMO and Dave Ross from KIRO, former Washington Ceasefire President Ralph Fascitelli, State Rep. Jaime Pedersen, and U.S. Attorney for Washington Jenny Durkan. Filmed segments featured Workman, former King County Sheriff Sue Rahr and Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes.
The program, which may be viewed on-line here, also aired on public television in Yakima, which serves south-central Washington.
Hosted by veteran reporter and commentator C.R. Douglas, Public Matters covers a wide range of current events topics, and probes the beliefs of panelists via imaginary scenarios that reflect real-life situations.
After Fascitelli said that a scenario in which an armed citizen takes out a mass shooter would happen only in a fantasy, Gottlieb fires back, noting that, “Every single day in America somebody uses firearms to defend himself, his family and property against…criminal attack.”
Rahr, who stepped down from the sheriff’s post early in 2012 to take over as director of the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Center, discussed the deadly Café Racer shooting in May that took four lives at the coffee shop and claimed another victim in downtown Seattle. The lone killer in that spree, Ian Stawicki, subsequently took his own life on a West Seattle sidewalk as police closed in.
“With the Café Racer shooting, I can’t think of a single gun control strategy that would have prevented him from getting a gun,” Rahr told a reporter.
Gottlieb was pleased with the broadcast. He told TGM that it was fair and that anti-gunners clearly did not like to discuss a scenario involving a legally-armed citizen intervening to stop a mass shooting.
