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

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

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.”

Nugent is expected to attend this evening’s State of the Union address as a guest of Steve Stockman, the Texas Republican who recently threatened to file articles of impeachment if President Barack Obama sought to use executive orders to curb gun rights.