NRA Board Member Ted Nugent Blames Gun Violence On “Leftist Stooges”

In a column for birther website WND, National Rifle Association board member Ted Nugent blamed gun violence on leftists and advanced a number of false arguments about gun policy, including the long-debunked claim that higher gun availability leads to lower gun crime.

Expressing support for armed teachers in schools, Nugent claimed that gun violence was the product of “anti-gun leftist policies”:

The left has lied for decades about guns because they hate guns, despise the Second Amendment and blame the NRA families for crime and violence in our cities.

Truth is, it is the socialist stooges who are responsible for violence. It is their policies that prevent good guys from arming and protecting themselves and creates the big lie of “gun free” slaughter zones.

It isn't just anti-gun leftist policies that have enabled thugs to breed and prosper. The violence on America's streets is the result of a number of other leftist big-government policies that have worked to destroy families and entire communities by discouraging accountability and rewarding dangerous behavior.

That's the turbo destructo modus operandi of the socialists: Intentionally destroy something and then claim the solution to fix it is always more government, more laws, more control and less freedom. 

Nugent concluded his piece by claiming that “Leftist stooges ... don't care one bit about protecting kids”:

Good people want to protect our children. Leftist stooges want to create conditions for evil to flourish. They don't care one bit about protecting kids.

Never trust leftist goons. They will put you and your children at risk to advance their socialist, anti-freedom agenda. 

Nugent's piece is peppered with untrue statements about gun violence. For example, Nugent blamed “socialist stooges” for creating "'gun free' slaughter zones," when most mass shootings that have occurred since January 2009 took place where guns were allowed to be carried.

Citing the debunked research of his “good friend” John Lott, Nugent also wrote that, "'More guns equal less crime.' Duh." In fact, Lott's research purporting to demonstrate such a relationship has been shown to contain serious coding errors that undermine its conclusion. Harvard Injury Control Research Center Director David Hemenway reviewed criticism of Lott's work and concluded “more than a dozen academics have found enough serious flaws in Lott's model to discount his findings.” Indeed, the best research on the subject suggests that loosening gun carrying rules actually increases aggravated assault.

Reviving the NRA's politicization of the protection received by President Obama's daughters, Nugent repeated the NRA's false claim that the school attended by the president's children has “11 armed guards.” Beyond the fact that it is inappropriate to compare the threats faced by the president's daughters to other children, Nugent's claim is factually incorrect.  

Nugent joined WND as a columnist in February and has since made a series of racially inflammatory comments in his column and on WND radio and has also used his WND platform to falsely claim that an assault weapon was not used in the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.