By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
After an armed private citizen fatally shot a teen suspect in a double-shooting he had apparently just witnessed, a national grassroots gun rights organization pointed to the irony of it happening in a city “which has done its worst to disarm honest citizens while crime has increased.”
The Wednesday night incident began with an argument between at least three people on a downtown Seattle street. According to published reports, the teenage gunman—who would have been illegally carrying the handgun he pulled—shot two others and then encountered the armed citizen, described by KING5 News, the local NBC affiliate, as a 57-year-old man, who shot him.
The suspect, who was reportedly 16, died of his wounds, and the armed citizen remained at the scene, cooperating with police investigators.
Recently-hired Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes told KING, “We need people to have cooler heads to prevail. People who are carrying weapons — just know that our officers are out here, we are doing proactive patrols.”
But Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, whose national headquarters is in nearby Bellevue, observed in a prepared statement, “Seattle police were on the scene within a couple of minutes, but as the saying goes, ‘when seconds count, police are minutes away.’ It is interesting to note that an online opinion poll by KOMO News shows an overwhelming 70 percent of respondents say their feeling of safety when working or visiting downtown Seattle is low.”
Former King County Sheriff John Urquhart, now a law enforcement analyst for KING, reminded the station in an interview, “Washington is what they call a ‘no duty to retreat’ state. Other states call it ‘stand your ground.’ The idea is exactly the same — when a person is confronted by a bad guy, he is not required to back away or run away.”
Washington also has strong use-of-force laws which have not been tampered with by anti-gun Democrat lawmakers who have been passing increasingly restrictive gun control laws over the past few years.
Under RCW 9A.16.020, force is lawful “Whenever necessarily used by a person arresting one who has committed a felony and delivering him or her to a public officer competent to receive him or her into custody;
“Whenever used by a party about to be injured, or by another lawfully aiding him or her, in preventing or attempting to prevent an offense against his or her person, or a malicious trespass, or other malicious interference with real or personal property lawfully in his or her possession, in case the force is not more than is necessary…”
Under RCW 9A.16.050, which covers homicide by a private citizen, “Homicide is also justifiable when committed either:
“(1) In the lawful defense of the slayer, or his or her husband, wife, parent, child, brother, or sister, or of any other person in his or her presence or company, when there is reasonable ground to apprehend a design on the part of the person slain to commit a felony or to do some great personal injury to the slayer or to any such person, and there is imminent danger of such design being accomplished; or
“(2) In the actual resistance of an attempt to commit a felony upon the slayer, in his or her presence, or upon or in a dwelling, or other place of abode, in which he or she is.”
“In a city where political policies have resulted in reduced police manpower while placing limits on the officers who remain,” Gottlieb said, “it should come as no surprise that an increasing number of law-abiding citizens are now licensed to carry firearms for their personal protection.”
According to the state Department of Licensing, King County, which encompasses Seattle, has the highest number of active concealed pistol licenses of any county in the state, more than 112,000 at the end of April. Coincidentally, just a few blocks away at about the same time, there was a fatal stabbing, Gottlieb noted, “which says a lot about crime in the city.”
The armed citizen was not arrested, and Urquhart noted the significance of this.
“The fact that the citizen was not arrested, was not booked, is not being described as a suspect, leads me to believe Seattle police see this as a legal and justified use of force,” he told KING. “But again, they don’t make the final decision — the prosecutor’s office does.”
