Glenn spoke with fervent 2nd Amendment supporter Ted Nugent on radio today because Ted is fired up about all the misinformation being spewed on the media about current laws, assault rifles and more. What are they getting wrong? And what does Ted think is the answer?
Full Transcript below:
GLENN: Let me go to Ted Nugent. Jeez. Another angry gun‑toting white guy.
PAT: Mmm‑hmmm.
GLENN: Ted?
NUGENT: Greetings, Glenn, from the greatest rhythm and blues rock‑and‑roll tour in the history of noise.
GLENN: Where are you today?
NUGENT: I'm in the swamps of Jackson, Michigan, cleansing my soul prior to heading for Wisconsin to continue the rock‑and‑roll celebration.
GLENN: Okay. Now, do you have to cleanse your soul after Wisconsin?
NUGENT: I do it daily anyhow, whether I need it or not.
GLENN: Okay. Just, I didn't know. Some people just cleanse their soul on, you know, Saturdays or Sundays.
NUGENT: I wash my hair on Saturday.
GLENN: Okay. Good. Ted, you have been ‑‑ and I'm sorry that I haven't had a chance to return any of your phone calls this week. It's been nuts because of the thing that we're doing this weekend, but you ‑‑ I believe you are close to a brain aneurysm on this story coming out of Aurora, Colorado.
NUGENT: Well, yes. Number one, I can't go further without saying that the Nugent family and everybody I know, I mean literally everybody says prayers for the victims and their families in the face of such a tragedy, but now we need to go on to the vile intentional misrepresentation of what did happen. And I think as soon as you can, Glenn, you need to talk to your friend Bill O'Reilly because I've never heard such nonsense in all my life and I think it epitomizes the ignorance out there when Bill O'Reilly states as a fact that anybody can go buy a bazooka and a machine gun without the government knowing it unless, of course, you're in the crips and the bloods. My God in heaven, since 1934 machine guns ‑‑ by the way, bazookas are not available this week and they never have been.
GLENN: Really?
NUGENT: But to buy a machine gun, you have to go through such a vetting, such a federal BATF and local law enforcement, national law enforcement review, background check, fill out all kinds of documents and buy a $200 transfer tax certificate per purchase if they allow it. So this kind of information is just looney. And let me state as if fact that I know for a fact that most of the damage done by this devil in Aurora was done with the number one pheasant shotgun in the world, a Remington 870. His AR‑15 Smith & Wesson rifle is now the most popular sporting rifle in America. It is the number one competition, number one in self‑defense, it's the number one sporting rifle for big game and small game. And if they keep calling it an assault weapon, I may have that aneurysm.
GLENN: You know why they call it that? Because of the way it looks. That's it. Because of ‑‑ I was out shooting, what, two weeks ago and that's exactly ‑‑ that's the gun we were using. And we were target practice. I mean, that is the gun we would use. If I was going hunting, that would be the gun that I would use.
NUGENT: Oh, and most sporters do but let me ‑‑ you talk about the way it looks. Dianne Feinstein and her ‑‑ by the way, Dianne Feinstein who's just literally going berserk on the misinformation about the weapons and the ammunition. This is the woman who had a concealed weapons permit but denied California citizens the right to have a concealed weapons permit. She demonized the concept of concealed weapon permit when she had one, Glenn, and she sat in a room with a friend of mine who will remain unnamed, unidentified, a Democrat congressman from one of my favorite states and she took out a copy of shotgun news. This is a publication that, you know, lists the different types of firearms available, legal firearms, and she got out a Sharpie and circled the ones she wanted banned in the original assault weapon ban and she circled ones that were black with folding stocks when, in fact, the exact same weapon, exact same rate of fire, exact same caliber, everything was the same but it was made out of wood. She didn't want to ban those. This is lunacy. And remember, Glenn, this monster in Aurora took 20 minutes to do his evil. In 20 minutes you don't need an assault weapon, you don't need a machine gun, which he didn't have either of, but you could do more damage with a single shot or a bolt action because he had 20 minutes.
GLENN: You know, here's the thing. If ‑‑ and nobody I hear is talking about this except people like us: If you had more people carrying a weapon. If people had a gun in their back and they were ‑‑ and they were licensed to carry it, that guy wouldn't have gotten off more than four shots.
NUGENT: And I'm sure you've covered it because there was a shooting like that in a church in Aurora this year earlier.
GLENN: Yep.
NUGENT: That was stopped because the guy had a gun. And I know the hysteria about teargas and it was dark in the theater. Glenn, I am not making this up. Last week my wife Shemane and I were filming a segment for our Spirit of the Wild show and we were shooting at watermelons surrounded by human silhouette targets just as kind of a competition and from 20 feet and from 20 yards and we were shooting from every imaginable angle, undercover, from sitting, from squatting, from prone position, from behind cover and from in the open, and we never hit an innocent and we never missed the watermelon. And I'm just a guitar player. If a guitar player can neutralize a watermelon from 20 feet ‑‑ and this is with live fire, by the way.
GLENN: Do you ‑‑
NUGENT: We would shoot while the other would take the target shots. So there was that tension of live fire. And this was done in a scenario ‑‑ and I understand it wasn't real bullets coming at us and it wasn't people screaming, running around.
GLENN: Please.
NUGENT: But dear God in heaven, doing nothing is not an option. Training, having a firearm to neutralize an evil gun maniac is a way to go, and we train for that. And I wish is I would have been in the theater that day.
GLENN: So do I. So do I.
NUGENT: Glenn, I don't mean to monopolize here, but heroism, warrior action was performed that day by men who dove in the line of fire to save their loved ones. They were a warrior but they were unarmed warriors.
GLENN: Look. Ted, this is the same story over and over and over again, and you know as well as I do one of the safest countries in the world is Switzerland. Because you're required to have an automatic weapon.
NUGENT: A real machine gun.
GLENN: Right. You're required to have it. Why? Because they know. The best way to defend ‑‑ why do you think Switzerland is never overrun? Because they're all defended ‑‑ every home is defended by the people in the home. And let's look at Chicago. Play the audio from Chicago, will you, Pat? Listen to this audio from Chicago. And nobody's talking about this. Here's a city that's got gun control out the wazoo.
NUGENT: It's a gun‑free zone.
GLENN: Yeah. Listen to the audio here.
VOICE: Six people are shot within 15 minutes on the city's south side. One teenager is dead.
REPORTER: Nancy Lou is at area two police headquarters. She has details.
REPORTER: The city's homicide rate is up by about 39% so far this year. Faith leaders called for a stop to the gun violence, and one pastor said bluntly, "We are tired of doing funerals." Community activist Andrew Holmes is also urging local radio stations to stop playing gangsta rap music which he believes has only encouraged all this shooting and killing.
GLENN: Of course it has. I mean, Ted, you know, does music affect people?
NUGENT: God knows it affects me, but in a beautifully positive way.
GLENN: Right.
NUGENT: And it does affect people negatively. If you talk about crime and you celebrate crime and you glorify, you know, evil and criminal activity, yeah. And it's been going on for years now.
GLENN: And nobody's talking about that. Nobody on the ‑‑ nobody in the news. They're talking about gun control, gun control, gun control. I'm not talking about music control. I'm not talking about movie control. I'm saying, can you recognize that that plays a role? Nobody ‑‑ you should be licensed. You should be licensed to make a movie. You should be licensed to make music. How ridiculous is that?
NUGENT: It's all ridiculous. Well, bottom line is Chicago is a gun‑free zone but Rahm Emanuel like Mayor Daley uses tax dollars from citizens who they force into unarmed helplessness to pay for their armed security detail. This is unbelievable.
GLENN: Okay.
NUGENT: And more people should join the NRA.
GLENN: Okay.
NUGENT: More people should do their homework about real firearms and real legality of firearms and ammunition. Everything reported about this shooter and his so‑called armor‑piercing ammo. And remember, Glenn, they wanted to ban hollow points because it does too much damage. Well, hollow points won't go through the walls because they're ‑‑ because they disrupt in the target. There's so much inform ‑‑ misinformation out there that I pray to God you'll talk to Bill O'Reilly because his ‑‑
GLENN: I'm on his show tomorrow night.
NUGENT: He's screaming that people can go to the local florist and buy a bazooka.
STU: (Laughing.)
GLENN: Okay, Ted, let me change subjects real quick. I would like you ‑‑ and just shoot me an e‑mail on this. I want you to go to TheBlaze.com and I want you to read the story on the East River monster. This is, there's three pictures of this thing. Have you guys seen this on The Blaze yet? There are three pictures of this animal that has washed up on shore from the East River and I ‑‑ and nobody knows what animal this is. I don't ‑‑ and you know animals. Maybe you'll know. It is the freakiest looking animal I've ever seen. You see that, Stu?
STU: I'm going there now, though.
GLENN: It's a freak ‑‑
NUGENT: I will freak it out because I love freakish animals, especially with garlic and butter.
GLENN: No, you don't want to eat this one. If you have any idea, maybe it's a dog? But it's ‑‑ it doesn't look like a dog. I mean, it has fingers.
STU: They had one of these that came out recently, though, and it was proven to be a fake, right? I mean, I don't believe it. The Montauk monster. That's what it was. And that one wasn't real.
GLENN: Well ‑‑
STU: Right?
GLENN: I don't know. I don't ‑‑ this looks pretty ‑‑ I mean, this is freaky looking.
STU: That is really, really ‑‑
GLENN: Very spooky.
NUGENT: If you want to save strange animals, be sure you open a hunting season on them and then we will manage them for maximum productivity.
GLENN: Ted, thanks very much. I'll talk to you soon, my friend.
NUGENT: Ytah, God speed, Glenn. Carry on, my friend.
GLENN: Have a good rest of the tour.