BELLEVUE, WA – Recognizing his more than two decades as the communications director for the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, and his fifty-plus years as a working journalist, Dave Workman is the recipient of CCRKBA’s “Lifetime Achievement” award.
“This award is very special and dear to my heart,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “A lot of people probably don’t realize how important he is to the gun rights movement, and what he’s accomplished over all the years.”
Workman received a standing ovation from the audience at the annual Gun Rights Policy Conference, and with this recognition, he became the only person in the conference’s 38-year history to receive two awards during the same ceremony. He was also named to the Joseph P. Tartaro Hall of Fame by the Second Amendment Foundation.
A 1972 graduate of the University of Washington School of Communications, where he wrote for the DAILY, the UW’s campus newspaper, Workman’s professional career began as editor of the weekly Snoqualmie Valley Record in January 1973. For a brief time during his years at the Valley Record, he was also a stringer for the Associated Press. In 1979, after winning a writing award from the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association, he moved into outdoors journalism at Fishing & Hunting News, a division of Outdoor Empire Publishing. There, he worked as the Washington editor of the weekly “hook and bullet” journal, earning writing awards from the Northwest Outdoor Writers Association. He became senior editor of F&H News, and then transferred to the company’s publications division as managing editor in 1993.
In October 2000, he moved to his current position as CCRKBA Communications Director, and senior editor of GUN WEEK, which transitioned to an all-digital format called TheGunMag.com. In this dual role, he has been interviewed frequently on firearms-related issues by television and radio reporters both domestic and foreign, often providing background information on guns, legislation and firearms law. He has co-authored seven books with Gottlieb and solo-authored a booklet on Washington State gun laws and rights.
As he moves toward what he calls “some semblance of semi-retirement,” the 73-year-old Workman said he was both honored and humbled with this award and the recognition for his career “pounding a typewriter, and then a keyboard.”
As a freelance writer his byline currently appears in American Handgunner, GUNS Magazine and Northwest Sportsman. His work has also been published in Gun World, Gun Digest and other firearms periodicals. He has written Op-Ed columns appearing in several major newspapers including the Chicago Tribune, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer.