Ted Nugent, rocker and ardent Trump supporter, has insisted America doesn’t have a gun problem in a new YouTube livestream.
His comments follow data from the White House stating that, in 2020, homicides rose 30 per cent on the previous year – and are up a further 24 per cent in the first quarter of 2021.
On his YouTube channel, Nugent denied that America had a gun problem, instead blaming the rise in violent crime on “recidivism”.
“There isn’t a gun problem in America. There is an intentional engineered recidivism problem in America. You wanna stop ninety-six per cent of the violent crimes. Don’t let ’em out.”
The National Rifle Association member also launched into a further rant, saying that criminals should never be allowed out of prison:
“If they shoot or stab people, I don’t care if they even miss, that’s a dangerous, vicious, evil act,” he continued. “We don’t want people capable of dangerous, vicious, evil acts walking our streets. We want them either dead or in a cage forever.”
Nugent on stage at a Trump campaign rally in 2020
A study done by The Sentencing Project reported that less than ten per cent of people convicted of violent crime reoffended.