Gun Enthusiast Ted Nugent Wasn't Anxious To Bear

Quote:

---

Gun Enthusiast Ted Nugent Wasn't Anxious To Bear Arms Against Those Pesky Vietcong

With the Vietnam War raging, young Ted Nugent was not so anxious to bear arms on behalf of his country.

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/ted-nugen...ger-467132

The 64-year-old musician, now a vocal gun advocate and member of the National Rifle Association’s board of directors, avoided toting around an M14 thanks to a series of military deferments that allowed him to dodge the draft, according to Selective Service System records.

Theodore Anthony Nugent first received a high school 1-S deferment in February 1967, when he was 18. After briefly being reclassified as available for service, Nugent got a 2-S college deferment when he enrolled in Oakland Community College in Michigan.

In August 1969, Nugent took his draft physical and was rejected for service. He was classified as 1-Y, indicating that he was qualified for service only in time of a national emergency. The 1-Y classification was usually issued to candidates saddled with significant medical or mental issues.

In interviews, Nugent has provided varying accounts of how he avoided a seat on a troop transport to Southeast Asia. In a 1977 High Times interview, he claimed to have stopped bathing a month before his draft physical, adding that he showed up for the exam with pants “crusted” with urine and feces. “I was a walking, talking hunk of human poop,” recalled Nugent.

But while Nugent would subsequently disavow his defecation claim, he did cop to snorting a line of crystal meth before the physical because, “I wanted to see the look on the Sergeant’s face.”

Five weeks after the exam, Nugent received his 1-Y deferment on October 7, 1969. Nugent’s 1-Y deferment remained in effect until 1972, when the classification was abolished. He was then reclassified as 4-F, which covered registrants not qualified for military service.

In his High Times interview, Nugent recalled his glee at evading the chance to defend his country (though he mixed up the 1-Y and 4-F deferments). “And in the mail I got this big juicy 4-F,” he said. “They’d call dead people before they’d call my ass.”

---