An Arizona lawmaker told a forum on gun control last week that black and Hispanic communities are "better armed than the police officers who are supposed to be controlling them."

State Rep. Jay Lawrence, a Scottsdale Republican, walked back the comments when reached Thursday by The Arizona Republic.

At the event, organized Aug. 29 by March for Our Lives Arizona, Lawrence was asked about crafting gun policy that does not disproportionately target people of color.

"Black and brown communities, if you look at the weapons that they have, they are not licensed," Lawrence said. "They are better armed than the police officers who are supposed to be controlling them. They have firearms galore."

The lawmaker said people disrespect the police.

"Black and brown communities, black communities in particular, have gangs. And the gangs have to be stopped," he said.

Lawrence's comments were first reported by Cronkite News.

The lawmaker said Thursday that he was not fair when he spoke.

"Gangs do have armaments, and in many instances better armaments, than the police who are supposed to be controlling them," he added.

But, Lawrence added: "I think that was too much."

The comment prompted gasps at the town hall, which featured several local legislators.

"You're painting entire communities with a broad brush. That's dangerous," said state Rep. Diego Rodriguez, D-Phoenix, who described Lawrence's comments as coming from a place of ignorance.

Rodriguez said he did not address the comment at the time because he did not want to distract from the issue of guns, the topic of the forum.

Lawrence describes himself as a pro-Second Amendment legislator. He said he was the only Republican lawmaker to participate in the forum.

"In order to make a point, you may say things out of context," he said.

What the forum was about

The group that organized the forum, March for Our Lives Arizona, sprang out of the activism of students in Parkland, Florida, after a mass shooting in 2018 at their high school.

The town hall also came less than a month after a gunman killed 22 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. Authorities say the gunman was targeting Mexicans with the attack.

The shooting prompted renewed calls for gun control.

In Arizona, there was little will in a mostly Republican Legislature to act on the issue either during the session earlier this year or over the summer, when Democrats called for a special session.

A series of GOP comments on race, ethnicity

Rodriguez said there did not seem to be accountability among Republican legislators for statements like Lawrence's.

Over the summer, Phoenix New Times published a recording of state Sen. Sylvia Allen, R-Snowflake, telling a Republican group that America would "look like South American countries very quickly" and warned that immigrants were "flooding" the United States at a rate that didn't allow for them to "learn the principles of our country."

Allen has said that the intent of her comments was misunderstood, and Senate President Karen Fann as well as Gov. Doug Ducey have defended her.

That came on the heels of comments last year by then-state Rep. David Stringer, who called immigration an "existential threat" and said "there aren't enough white kids to go around" — comments that prompted condemnation from both sides of the aisle.

Stringer later resigned amid an ethics investigation into unrelated revelations that he had been charged with sex crimes during the 1980s.

The statements, collectively, point to a gap between some Republican lawmakers and many in an increasingly diverse Arizona.

Andrew Oxford can be reached at andrew.oxford@arizonarepublic.com or on Twitter at @andrewboxford.