Ted Nugent Has Some Advice for Joe Biden
Damnocracy guitarist and recently retired gun program host Ted Nugent doesn’t have two brain cells to rub together to make a third. So if he ever wrote a letter to Vice President Joe Biden, I have to imagine it would read something like this:
Fortunately for any remaining shreds of dignity Teddy may have stored somewhere in the back of his closet, he hired someone to compose the actual letter to the veep for him. Consequently, it reads as follows:
“Joe,
“Congratulations on your appointment to lead a presidential commission to end gun-related violence.
“As a National Rifle Association board member, husband, father, grandfather, law enforcement officer and genuinely concerned American, I too want nothing more than to see evil, senseless massacres stopped. I concur with the president and caring people everywhere: It’s time to end these slaughters…
“As you gather your team to study massacres and how to stop them, I offer to you my services and a lifetime of expertise on guns in all their implementations. While I strongly differ with President Obama on many issues, I agree with him that we must work with all we can possibly muster to end these tragedies.
“As you begin to formulate your thoughts on how to proceed with your task, I hope your starting point is to provide the president with the facts regarding these slaughters and to offer him common-sense recommendations that are void of a political agenda and will actually make a meaningful difference. If the American people smell a political agenda here, that will only bog down our efforts.
“In the spirit of goodwill and a deep desire to end gut-wrenching, incredibly sad and senseless rampages, I offer you the following recommendations:
“I encourage you to persuade the president to lead this effort by providing a number of public service announcements. The announcements should include watching out for each other, encouraging parents to be more involved in their children’s lives regarding entertainment choices, and knowing various indicators we should watch for in people who are unstable.
“Clearly, the focus on solving these mass murders must be on the mentally ill. In almost every instance of mass killing, there were ample red flags and warning alarms that either were avoided or were not acted upon by mental health professionals, family members, friends and acquaintances. While I deeply respect an individual’s privacy and civil liberties, the American people need basic awareness of what indicators to look for regarding potentially violent, psychotic people. Our collective safety begins with being collectively vigilant.
“You will find in your assessment that all of the massacres have occurred in gun-free zones. What gun-free zones create is an environment where good people are unarmed and virtually defenseless against an unstable person intent on committing mass murder. Gun-free zones are modern killing fields. I implore you to recommend that Congress pass a law to ban gun-free zones immediately.
“Just like your full-time, armed security detail, qualified citizens with authorized, legal concealed-carry permits should be able to carry weapons virtually everywhere to protect themselves, their loved ones and innocents.
“I also implore you to strongly consider recommending that trained school officials have access to weapons to protect students. Just as airline pilots may have access to a weapon to prevent another Sept. 11 mass murder, school officials also should be trained to stop shooting sprees at our schools.
“I don’t encourage you to recommend a ban on any weapon, magazine capacity or type of ammunition. That won’t accomplish anything other than prevent the 99.9 percent of responsible, law-abiding Americans from enjoying these modern weapons as we do now. We should never recommend or develop public policy that restricts the rights of the good guys based upon what evil people do or might do. If that were the case, alcohol still would be banned. As you may know, drunk drivers kill an estimated 12,000 Americans each year and hurt tens of thousands more.
“I encourage you also to keep this misnamed ‘gun violence’ in perspective. While all deaths are tragic, the vast majority of gun-related murders and violence are committed by gang members who do not use guns that look like — but do not perform like — military assault weapons. The majority of crimes that involve a firearm are committed with handguns. I concurred with you back in 2008 when you stated, “If [Mr. Obama] tries to fool with my Beretta, he’s got a problem.” I trust you still maintain those sentiments.
“Again, I offer you my services and a lifetime of expertise. I look forward to hearing from you.
“Sincerely,
“Ted Nugent”
First of all, let’s get the obvious out of the way: it sure was nice of Ted to offer to spend some portion of his last months as a free or living man working on this issue. But that he believes anyone in the Obama administration will have anything to do with him after he publicly threatened the president means that he’s either delusional or stupid or both (I’m going with “both”).
But here are the two parts of the letter that bother me:
- The insistence that automatic and semi-automatic weapons do not need to be banned. Besides attempting to overcompensate for having a small penis, I can’t imagine why Ted would feel the need to continue to own such firearms — surely, it’s not for taking down game. I would suggest that if Ted can’t hunt without such tools, he’s not a very good hunter, anyway.
- This sentence: “While all deaths are tragic, the vast majority of gun-related murders and violence are committed by gang members who do not use guns that look like — but do not perform like — military assault weapons.” Because, uh… what the fuck does that have to do with anything? The implication is that “while all deaths are tragic,” the deaths of gang members (who I’m guessing are mostly minorities — I have yet to hear about any juggalo-on-juggalo on crime) are slightly less tragic. Which makes no sense to me. I guess we’re supposed to think they’re less tragic because when you join a gang you presumably know that you’re putting yourself in harm’s way? But by that line of reasoning, the death of a police officer or a soldier would be equally less-tragic, and I doubt Ted would ever make such an assertion. Is it because gang members are probably involved in illegal activities? Even if you buy that argument, I’m not sure what the hell it has to do with the fact that gang members “do not use guns that look like — but do not perform like — military assault weapons.” Surely, he doesn’t mean to imply that since “The majority of crimes that involve a firearm are committed with handguns” we should ban handguns — he just said we shouldn’t outright ban any weapons. So it comes across as though Ted thinks these decisions are being made by people who don’t have all the facts in front of them. Like someone just shows Joe Biden a photo of a gun and doesn’t tell him anything about that gun, and then Joe Biden thinks, “Hm, that gun sure does look like the one Sly used in Rambo III, we had better ban it.” By all means, if Ted wants to own a gun that looks like an AK-47 but actually only carries one bullet at a time and requires the manual insertion of gun powder in order to be fired, I have no issue with that. It’s the fact that he wants to own an actual AK-47 because once when he as a kid he saw Bambi and it made him cry so now he’s vowed vengeance against deer everywhere that irks me.
I know I’m being flip. It’s 2013 and maybe my resolution ought to be to be nicer to people… I mean, in theory, at least, Ted is trying to be a good dude. But I don’t know why anyone would ever take Ted’s advice on any issue other than how to convince an underage girl’s parents to make you her legal guardian so you can fuck her. There’s an subject in which we know Ted is an expert.
P.S. How the fuck is “gun violence” mis-named? It’s violence enacted with guns… right?
P.P.S. We should TOTALLY start arming teachers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLJzM27arlE
Via The Washington Times… thanks to Hetal Bhatt for the tip.
