"I have the American dream licked"

I know you run a hunting camp for children. How do you feel about kids and hunting?

The kids love my attitude, they love my energy, they love my passion. I have brought the truth to these kids. They crave stimuli. Don't we all? Isn't that the American dream? To be stimulated emotionally, physically, spiritually? We want stimuli, we want adventure, we want challenge. Every kid wants the extreme of all of the above. There is nothing more extreme than penetrating the almost impenetrable defense mechanism of the game animal, and making that mystical flight of the arrow go where you want it to. That is your ultimate stimuli, ultimate extreme, ultimate challenge, ultimate joy, ultimate frustration, ultimate gratification, because you are bringing home the purest of flesh when the arrow pierces.

If you want to be environmentally responsible and progressive, you've got to be hands-on, or at least vote for hands-on policies. The kids are looking for this, they are looking for independence and individuality. Every human's instinct is to be independent and self-sufficient. There's nothing in us that really wants to be wimps and bloodsuckers and dependent. Regardless of what Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan and -- what's his name? -- Reverend Al -- yeah, he's a fucking reverend, and I'm the Dalai Lama -- say. These people have created an entire culture celebrating dependency. And Jesse Jackson will make sure that those who follow him remain dependent so he can keep his Armani.

But no one wants to be dependent; we all want to be independent. And independence is incredibly attractive to children. Our Ted Nugent Kamp for Kidz was started in 1989, right after Fred Bear died. Fred Bear was my hero and my mentor and one of the greatest conservationists ever, and a wonderful man, and an amazing, stealthy predator. He hunted with a bow and arrow and taught an entire generation to get back to nature as a healer. And what Fred Bear taught me was to promote hunting, not defend it. We don't have anything to defend! I promote it to the young people via my rock 'n' roll energy and attitude.

I keep in touch with these kids. Some of them are young adults now, raising kids on their own now. And they keep us posted on how they are channeling their own children's energies into an environmentally healthy lifestyle -- hunting, fishing, shooting, marksmanship, archery, planting trees.

How old were your own children when they started hunting?

I have four children: Star is 31, Sasha is 28, Toby, my oldest boy, is 25, and Rocco will be 12 this summer. All my children started the marksmanship discipline when they were 4 and 5 years old, with BB guns and pellet guns. They began archery shortly thereafter, around 5 or 6. Discipline is the next step: the next BB, the bullet, the next arrow, the next shot, can you make it more controlled than the previous one? That discipline went deep into their souls, to utilize that same focus on other endeavors, whether academic or love, or passions, or diet. My children are healthy and giving and upbeat and independent. And they all started killing deer when they were 5 or 6 years old.

Many parents are pretty afraid of introducing their children to toy guns, much less teaching them how to shoot real ones.

Here's the thing with that: In "God, Guns, and Rock n' Roll" I devote several chapters to the inescapable truism that everybody is fascinated with guns. There is not a human being in the world who isn't interested from one angle or another in guns. Every child will want and every child will end up getting their hands on a gun. With that reality in mind, now what? Of course, I'll tell you what: You supervise their handling of fire, and gasoline and power tools and lawnmowers, and baseball bats, and vehicles, and guns. You supervise and train them and -- here we go again -- discipline them with a conscientious, safety approach towards all things that could be dangerous.

There are hundreds of millions of gun owners in this country, and not one of them will have an accident today. The only misuse of guns comes in environments where there are drugs, alcohol, bad parents, and undisciplined children. Period. Let's make a note of this, shall we? You can refer to this over the course of your wonderful journalist career: Here it is, Monday the 20th of May, 2002, 1:06 Eastern time: Though I pray for Ozzy and Sharon and the children, the success of their show is the manifestation of our cultural deprivation. I pray for their safety, I pray for their happiness, I pray that they get off the drugs and the alcohol and the tobacco.

But you mark my words: It is very likely that you will have chills and goosebumps on your arms when the time comes -- I pray that it does not come -- that there will be a tragedy, perhaps even a death, in the Osbourne family, because of their out-of-control, irresponsible lifestyle. Last night, we saw Jack, the boy, dressed up as an Army man -- which is cool, all my kids do that. But he was taking a large bayonet, and violently stabbing it into a box. Now hopefully, it was just a scripted, goofy moment. And I'm sure there are a lot of children who do similar things, mine included -- today we will do farm chores, we will use knives, we will use wheat-whips, we will use a lawnmower, we will go out and train with our guns -- but I see a gross lack of supervision in many households.

Again, I reference the Osbournes. People think it's cute! People think aberrant, dangerous behavior is cute! It's not cute! Let's hope it doesn't happen. But you know, I think at some point, you and I, Amy, are going to say, "Oh my God. Ted said this would happen." They are going to get in a car wreck, they are going to drink and drive, they are going to be hanging around with some dope dealer, and they are going to get shot. They're going to snap, because they have no discipline, they have no good will that guides their lifestyle. I'm sure that Ozzy and Sharon all love each other, and that's wonderful. But there is no discipline. And when you have no discipline, tragedy is waiting to happen.

You're in San Francisco, so you owe those people out there to enlighten them to these things that they have tried to distance themselves from. And they are paying for it: in the crime rate, in the AIDS rate, in the molestation rate, in the allowing-dog-to-kill-people rate. A dog couldn't possibly kill someone while I'm around. Wanna know why? Because I have a Glock in my belt and if I saw a dog endangering some person, I'd shoot the motherfucker. There you go. Case closed, drive safely. Dogs nothing, people 1.

Give my best to Salon.com, and tell Salon.commers to come to Ted Nugent.com and they'll get a dose of reality that they will either love and make them celebrate the truth, or it will make them shit blood. Both reactions which I love, by the way.

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