LOUISVILLE | Rock legend Ted Nugent on Sunday said a failed criminal justice system under the leadership of President Obama is why NRA conventiongoers weren’t allowed to bring their guns with them into a Friday forum featuring likely GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.
Mr. Nugent opened up the floor for questions during his Sunday event, and a man asked him about the Secret Service’s preventing people from bringing their guns into the Trump speech — a speech in which Mr. Trump pledged to get rid of gun-free zones.
“It’s a dichotomy if ever there was one,” Mr. Nugent said.
He recalled his own run-in with the Secret Service and described it as a positive experience.
That was an apparent reference to a meeting prompted by comments he made at an NRA event in April 2012 that if Mr. Obama was re-elected, Mr. Nugent would either be dead or in jail by the same time the following year.
“In fact, I admired and saluted ’em face to face when they came to investigate me,” he said.
“They are our friends,” he said. “The majority of law enforcement, including the feds, the majority are on our side.
“The reason that policy has to exist is because of our failed court system,” he said.
“Rapists, murderers, child molesters, ’knockout’ game monsters walk the streets with us,” he said. “But instead of just keeping devils in cages, our failed anti-justice system has freed them into our communities, and now [with] Barack Obama, now there’s tens of thousands of more.
“And so that’s why law enforcement has to err on the side of caution, knowing that our judges and our prosecutors and our states’ attorneys and mostly the U.S. attorneys — they have freed monsters among us,” he said.
“That’s who the Secret Service is protecting Donald Trump and the other candidates from,” he said. “They’re not protecting ’em from NRA members.
“If we would keep rapists and murderers and ’knockout’ gamers and carjackers in cages forever, no one would have to protect anybody from anybody,” he said to cheers and applause.
“Everybody knows — everybody knows — that sex crimes, [molesting] is a 100 percent recidivistic crime. Everybody knows that, and our system lets them out,” he said. “Shoot them and kill them. Since they won’t control them, we shall.
“’Nugent was recommending vigilanteism,’” he then said mockingly. “Whatever.”
A woman also asked Mr. Nugent if he would make some phone calls because she has tickets to his July 1 show in Arizona and was afraid they wouldn’t allow guns there.
“You got to me kidding me,” he replied. “We usually frisk people. If they’re unarmed, we loan ’em one.
“I will make those calls. I can’t promise anything. I’m not going to not perform, because I’ll have my gun,” he said.
“That is upsetting,” he said.
“So there’s going to be moments in life that don’t make any sense, and I can’t just move into Arizona and move into every state” and decree a new law, he said.
“I got a lot of power, but I ain’t got that much,” he said. “So I will work on that and I will talk to the authorities.”
“And I would have no problem,” he said. “In fact, I happen to know that most of you are armed right here, and I’ve never felt safer in my life.”
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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