National Rifle Association board member Ted Nugent said “losers” who don't carry a gun “get cut down by murderous maniacs like blind sheep to slaughter” in a column for WND, becoming the latest public conservative figure to blame victims of gun violence who are unarmed.

In an October 7 column headlined, " The Answer: Get A Damn Handgun," Nugent urged Americans to buy and carry guns and criticized people who are shot while unarmed. After declaring that “any law, any regulation” of guns is unconstitutional, Nugent wrote about “those losers amongst us ... [who] fall for the big lie of political correctness, and get cut down by murderous maniacs like blind sheep to slaughter” :

Anything, any law, any regulation, any directive, any decree, any dastardly claim to the contrary is pure, unambiguous criminal infringement in the first degree, and I see a whole gang of criminal violators everywhere I look in our government, our courts and in pretty much every power-abusing bureaucracy out there. Meanwhile, those losers amongst us - spinelessly discarding self-evident truth, logic, common sense and pure human instinct - continue to fall for the big lie of political correctness, and get cut down by murderous maniacs like blind sheep to slaughter.

Nugent's advice that people should arm themselves is based on his false belief that the October 1 mass shooting at Umpqua Community College (UCC) in Oregon took place in a “gun-free zone.” (The campus was not a “gun-free zone,” according to Newsweek, it was “common knowledge” that “many students carried guns” on campus.)

Nugent also offered advice to anyone confronted by a gunman, including this counsel: “Do not hide under tables of chairs. Do not comply with the directions from the perpetrator.”

Nugent ended his column by advising readers to join the NRA, concluding, “Disarmed and helpless is an irresponsible, suicidal choice that will get you killed. Defend yourself.”

Blaming unarmed victims of gun violence for not defending themselves is an increasing trend among conservatives.

GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson recently created controversy for responding to the Oregon college shooting by saying, “I would not just stand there and let him shoot me.” (Although later he shared an anecdote about facing an armed robber at a fast food restaurant and recounted that he said, “I believe that you want the guy behind the counter.” )

In a September 28 post on his website, discredited gun researcher John Lott -- the inventor of the debunked “More Guns, Less Crime” thesis -- blamed a robbery victim who was shot in the back for his injuries, claiming the man displayed “passive behavior” because he fled from his attacker. The victim in that case, an Army veteran, was likely paralyzed by the shooting.

Following the June 17 killing of nine people at an historic African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina, NRA board member Charles L. Cotton wrote that the victims died because the church reverend -- who was also killed in the attack -- was an advocate for gun safety laws.