AZ: Conservative Chided for Echoing Michael Bloomberg on Disarming Blacks

Mayor Michael Bloomberg

A number of outlets have critisized Randy Pullen, a former Arizona Republican Party Chairman who tweeted on black crime and guns during the Democrat debate.

It was one of quite a few tweeted by Pullen during the Democrat debate.  It simply echoed the prescription put out by the infamous disarmist, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, over seven months ago.

On February 6th, 2015, the former Mayor of New York City said essentially the same thing.   From aspentimes.com:

Bloomberg claimed that 95 percent of murders fall into a specific category: male, minority and between the ages of 15 and 25. Cities need to get guns out of this group's hands and keep them alive, he said.

 EJ Montini published the tweet from Pullen in azcentral.com:

"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."

From Montini:

I'll leave it to you to decide if such a comment is racially insensitive or not.

What of the facts? Is Pullen correct?

Actually, yes.

Montini goes on to say that as most white victims are killed by white murderers, then maybe the idea of disarming blacks should be extended to whites.

That is exactly what Michael Bloomberg wants, and it is the core argument of the disarmists.

The idea of disarming blacks is not new.  It was implemented by the Democrats to keep guns out of the hands of freed slaves in the South after the Civil war.  Much of the history of "gun control" is really the history of racism, designed to disarm blacks, immigrants, Chinese, and other minorities. 

It is a bad idea, and Montini is smart enough to keep from directly promoting it.  First off, it does not work without a police state designed to keep the disarmed in line.   Even then, it does not work very well at reducing crime. 

Instead of focusing on race, what needs to be focused on is disarming dangerous criminals, not the entire population.  Notice that I said disarming criminals, not keeping them from getting guns.  Attacking the supply side is futile and counter productive.  But communicating to known violent offenders that if they are caught with a gun, they get a long jail term, they are being watched, and that there are rewards for people who turn in armed, violent criminals, actually works well.

If reducing murder is the desire, there is no need for "universal background checks", designed to facilitate  "universal gun registration", so as to allow for piecemeal gun confiscation, over time.  That paradigm, disarmament of the majority, does not work, and has never worked to reduce the murder rate, if you bother to actually look at the numbers.

Programs that work at disarming the tiny minority of people who commit violent crimes and who are the vast majority of murderers, have had considerable success.   David Kennedy, the Harvard trained criminologist, has been pushing this approach for a decade or more.  It works, but you have to keep at it.  Stop working at disarming the violent criminals, and the murder rate starts soaring again.   It takes an active police presence and cooperation of the residents of the poor neighborhoods where crime is rampant.   From David Kennedy, the renowned criminal justice professor and co-chair of the National Network for safe communities:

 “We now know that homicide and gun violence are overwhelmingly concentrated among serious offenders operating in groups: gangs, drug crews, and the like representing under half of one percent of a city's population who commit half to three-quarters of all murders.”

Take away an active police presence, and the murder rate soars, as it is doing in Baltimore and a number of other cities that have bought into the idiocy peddled by the Obama administration that the police are the primary problem.

Should Randy Pullen be castigated for channelling Michael Bloomberg?  Yes he should.  Taking guns away from a particular race is a bad idea, as it is for everyone.  The short term focus should be on disarming violent criminals.

Pullen says that his comment was sarcastic, and directed at the Democratic candidates.  From phoenixnewtimes.com:

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."

The long term focus should be on bringing the neighborhoods who produce the majority of the nation's criminals into the mainstream.   It requires an active police presence and fair treatment of the population, which leads to cooperation with the police and to trust of the criminal justice system.  Once you get to that point, the crime rate drops spectacularly, businesses can afford to move into an area without fear of being burned out, and prosperity starts to gain a foothold.

 Definition of disarmist

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