Ted Nugent joined Glenn on radio to discuss some of the ridiculous regulations that have overtaken then country. Nugent explained an incident from a hunting trip in Alaska that gave him some legal trouble - nearly resulting in him being charged with a felony. Watch the clip above, and tune into GBTV tonight at 5pm for more on this story!
Full Transcript Below:
GLENN: Turn that hippie rock‑and‑roll music down. It's too loud. Ted Nugent is with us. He's on tour in Los Angeles. Are you still in Los Angeles? Didn't you have something happen in Los Angeles yesterday, Ted?
NUGENT: Oh, something happens every minute of every day but, yes, it happens in Los Angeles, too. I'm shooting .50‑caliber sniper rifles in Los Angeles legally, 100% legal.
GLENN: Really?
NUGENT: We went up to the hills, up to the Oak Tree Shooting Range to test out some new ammo that I'm creating and just hanging with the SWAT guys and with a bunch of commandos of law enforcement and military, and Mrs. Nugent and I were shooting large caliber weapons getting ready for real rock‑and‑roll excitement.
GLENN: Okay. So Ted, tonight you're going to be on the program and we're going to go into detail about what this government tried to do to you over the last, the last few and what you ‑‑ what you've just signed. You want to get into what you've just signed and then we can talk tonight about what the government did to you?
NUGENT: You bet. Bottom line is I've been hunting all my life, Glenn. My mom and dad raised me to be 100% legal, law‑abiding, respect law enforcement and to be in the asset column of life, to use my heart and soul to think and be conscientious about how I conduct myself. And now as a perfect human being, I've stumbled perfectly over the years on occasion, but at the tender age of 63, I don't stumble anymore. I really put my heart and soul, especially as a representative of the honorable hunting outdoor lifestyle and the gun owners of this country and people who celebrate the U.S. Constitution that is enforced and supported at such great sacrifice by the heroes of the military. That being said, I stumbled in Alaska. There was a new law that it's very important to note that I wasn't the only one that had never heard of it. We can't find anybody that ever heard of this new unprecedented law that if your arrow or bullet shows sign of nicking or touching an animal that your big game tag is null and void, including the resident judge in the courtroom who's lived in the only zone where this law exists. He said on record during the court proceedings that he had never heard of the law, and he deals with law enforcement and wild game enforcement all the time.
My attorney has been a lifetime licensed guide and outfitter in Alaska, a lifetime hunter in Alaska. He never heard of the law. That notwithstanding, I have by all information been the first and only person ever charged with this. The State of Alaska was not interested in charging me, but the federal government was.
GLENN: Now, it's very interesting because this has been going on for how long? I'm trying to remember. A year, year and a half?
NUGENT: Well, I ‑‑ the bear hunt in question took place with my sons in the Prince of Wales Island in 2009. Remember, Glenn, I've been hunting in Alaska since 1977 and the law has always been the same, that when you take possession of your animal, you apply your tag. That's the universal law.
GLENN: Sure.
NUGENT: Since the early 1900s.
GLENN: It's like ‑‑ it would be like if you're going fishing and you caught a fish and it got away, you wouldn't count that as one of the fish you caught.
NUGENT: That's it in a nutshell, yes, sir.
GLENN: I mean, it's ridiculous.
NUGENT: It really is. And I've got to tell you, they gave me the ultimatum the day after I endorsed Mitt Romney and this has been ongoing now in the California, I've got to tell you the California no‑contest plea I gave, I'm going to write a piece that's going to tell you about the horror story, the unprecedented horror story. Once again the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service.
Now, if some U.S. Fish and Wildlife service are getting angry at me, that would be guilt, you're guilty of corruption and abuse of power. I'm not talking about good agents. I'm not talking about agents who abide by their oath to the U.S. Constitution and follow the letter of the law, including the Fourth Amendment. I'm talking about jackbooted thugs who are kicking down doors predawn, guns drawn over a charge that there might have been, quote, feed within 450 yards of my tree stand bow hunting for deer in California, Glenn.
GLENN: This is crazy. Now listen ‑‑
NUGENT: Which carries the weight of a jaywalking ticket, by the way.
GLENN: I want you to know they threatened to charge, may I say?
NUGENT: Yes. My friend Mitch Moore.
GLENN: I was going to say that what they threatened to charge you in Alaska.
NUGENT: Oh, in Alaska. Felonies.
GLENN: Felony.
NUGENT: Felony.
GLENN: Felony.
NUGENT: Felony. The Lasiak was first designed many years ago to stop the illegal importation of endangered species. I supported it 100%. But now the Lasiak is being used to charge innocent young men and women who abided by every game law ‑‑ get this ‑‑ for shooting a deer with all the right licenses during the right season with the right equipment but because they used the wrong broad head, a broad head, by the way, which is the number one selling broad head on planet Earth that is legal everywhere except two states and they shoot their deer, proper licenses, proper tags, bring it home and they're charged with felonies equal to armed robbery and rape and murder.
GLENN: Yeah. And going to jail. Now ‑‑
NUGENT: Yes.
GLENN: Now, you lose your right to have a gun forever.
NUGENT: Yes.
GLENN: You go to prison.
NUGENT: To vote.
GLENN: Right. You lose everything.
NUGENT: You become ‑‑ it's just like, let me ‑‑ can I have just 60 seconds ‑‑
GLENN: Yeah.
NUGENT: ‑‑ to make an analogy that no one will fail to grasp? In Michigan they are slaughtering law‑abiding innocent farmers' livestock based on fraudulent terms, claiming they're feral and invasive when everyone on planet Earth knows that livestock within a confined pen or corral or fenced area, it can't be feral or invasive by any stretch of those terms. But they call them feral and invasive and they're destroying private property.
Now Glenn, if you had a lever action 30.30 and all of a sudden the federal government went, "We're now calling lever action 30.30 rifles machine guns. We're going to call them machine guns and we're coming to get them." They can call anything what they want. They're destroying animals that are not feral and not invasive. They're calling them things they're not. It's a lie.
GLENN: So in other words, in case you don't know feral means basically they're wild.
NUGENT: Yeah, feral means the animals have escaped.
GLENN: If they're in a pen ‑‑
NUGENT: They're not escaped.
GLENN: ‑‑ they can't be feral.
NUGENT: But they're enforcing this with guns, Glenn.
GLENN: Now Ted, there's so much more to talk about tonight, but I want to tell you something that I found. I've been reading a lot of stuff from the Communist Manifesto and early communism because you're dealing with a lot of Marxists in this government now, and one of the things they have to do is seize or destroy the property of rebels. And I thought, you know, who, who are the strongest people against this president and they would be the ones in the red states. And the red states, those are farmers and hunters.
NUGENT: Yes.
GLENN: I really truly believe ‑‑ I know why you were targeted. I mean, you were targeted and run through the wringer, and you're not my only friend that this has happened to. And I don't mean just for hunting. I mean for other things. I have had friends who are some of the most honorable men I know. I mean, I about blew my stack on Monday when I came back from the NRA and I heard what they were doing to you and you had to meet with the Secret Service. I blew my stack on the air and ‑‑
NUGENT: A stack blower.
GLENN: And I said, because I know who Ted Nugent is. I know. And I was so angry about it because not only is it Ted Nugent, it's other friends of mine who are being put through the wringer the same way. And they are ‑‑ they are being bullied, they are being threatened with prison time, they are being threatened, "Confess, confess, confess." And they're like, I didn't do anything wrong.
NUGENT: Yep.
GLENN: And in your case you did but it ‑‑ when was that law put in?
NUGENT: That law was enacted in 2004‑2005, and it's only in the Prince of Wales Southeast Alaska area has this law ever existed. Remember the judge that lives there never heard of it.
GLENN: So nobody's ever been charged with it.
NUGENT: No one's ever been.
GLENN: And how is it that the federal government, that the judge didn't know about it but the federal government knew about it and nailed you on it.
NUGENT: Because the federal government for a long, long time has been trying, increasing the net of felonies, what qualifies as a felony. Do you know that the humane society of the United States somehow convinced some soulless people in Pennsylvania that killing a deer illegally is now a felon, a felony. A felony.
GLENN: Can you talk about ‑‑
NUGENT: Now, I'm all for management of wildlife, I think you should stop poaching, I think you have to abide by the law. Even the goofy laws. Until you change a goofy law, you have to abide by it. But some of these laws are indescribably bizarre and illogical.
GLENN: You describe one more law, I've got to go in about a minute, but describe one more thing that is happening on your ranch here in Texas that is not, it's not illogical. It is ‑‑ it's inhumane.
NUGENT: Yes. I ‑‑ the scimitar‑horned oryx was brought to Texas landowners, private land, many years ago because it's a magnificent animal and it was endangered in Africa. It is no longer endangered. We put a value on it where we harvest the surplus bulls and we went from like 1200 to 20,000‑something oryx, more than stabilizing the herd because they're valuable to landowners. The federal government sided with an animal rights maniac to ban the hunting. I have to get federal permits to touch my thriving, growing, healthy heard of oryx. There was a ‑‑
GLENN: And if you leave them alone, if you leave them alone, it's like bunny rabbits. They will overrun everything.
NUGENT: They will eat everything and all life will cease. It will be a moonscape.
GLENN: Okay.
NUGENT: That's why the annual season of harvest is a stewardship duty. So I have a crippled calf oryx that has three legs that is all gaunt and my wife and I are watching it slowly die. But if I were to do the right thing and dispatch this animal, put it out of its misery, I would be a felon, Glenn.
GLENN: Okay. So we have people, we have people in this administration that are actually making the case that you should put a human down, a baby down if they're deformed, if they have any kind of handicap, if they don't have any quality of life, they should be killed; but you can't do it to an oryx.
NUGENT: It's unbelievable. My brain won't accept this vile abuse of power. We've got to take this country back. And I've got to tell you, Glenn, I'm walking the streets of Los Angeles. You wouldn't think it's Ted Nugent country but, my goodness, the support you have out here for blowing the whistle. You're doing We the people, freedom of the press, First Amendment duties, and the supportive out here is unbelievable. Everywhere, Glenn, every cop, every family, every person walking the street, the spiked‑hair, pierced‑ear guy, everybody says, "Go, Ted, we support you. Thank you for standing up for common sense." I've never seen anything like it, Glenn.
GLENN: Well, you won't find that at CNN. Or the administration.
NUGENT: Oh, but when I bring it to Piers Morgan or CNN, my buddy, I can't even think of his name, Anderson Cooper, believe me, when I bring it, their ratings are representative of common sense, I promise you that.
STU: (Laughing).
GLENN: Ted Nugent, we'll talk to you tonight at 5:00 and there's so much more to tell of this story. Thank you very much
NUGENT: God speed, Glenn. You guys are doing God's work. I'm with you.
GLENN: All right. Talk to you later.
