Ex-Arizona GOP Chairman Randy Pullen Tweets that Blacks Are Society's "Main Killers" and Suggests Stripping Them of Guns

Ever wonder why the Republican Party has trouble attracting minority voters? 

Could it be because of inflammatory and stupid comments about blacks and Hispanics by respected GOP leaders like former Arizona Republican Party Chairman Randy Pullen?

While watching Tuesday night's Democratic presidential candidate debate, Pullen tweeted that black people are the "main killers" in society and suggested taking away their guns: 

"Yes black lives matter. The best way to end the slaughter of young black men is to take guns away from blacks as they are the main killers," Pullen wrote in the 6:55 p.m. tweet.

The former GOP chairman had been following the discussion led by moderator Anderson Cooper about the Black Lives Matter movement when he fired off his remark on social media. The tweet quickly drew massive criticism.

"Congrats cR-AZy made national news...again," one of Pullen's Twitter followers told him.


Pullen's correct that most young black men are killed by other black people — but then again, most white people are killed by other white people.

Statistics also don't bear out the idea that black people do most of the killing in the United States, either. FBI crime stats show that white people committed 4,849 murders in 2010 while black people committed 5,770 — but the stats also show that 4,224 murders were committed by someone whose race was unknown. The most striking difference in the FBI stats when it comes to murder offenders is the one between men and women.

But Pullen isn't about to emphasize that men are the "main killers" in the country or to suggest — even satirically — that the best way to end the slaughter of Americans in general might be to allow only women (of any race) to own guns.

Pullen tells New Times that he was "being sarcastic" about the comments of Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders during the debate.

"Guns aren't the cause of violence," he says. "The Democrats' approach is to take the guns away as if that will magically solve the problem. Taking guns away from any group would be a violation of the Second Amendment. If we solved the economic problems in this country so that young blacks and whites could get jobs, the violence would be greatly reduced. But that would be admitting that the economic policies of the last seven years have not worked."