On the final morning of the 2013 National Rifle Association annual convention in May, the day was bright, the mood was festive and Ted Nugent was neither dead nor in jail.
It was almost exactly a year earlier that Nugent, speaking on video at the NRA gathering in St. Louis, had made headlines by predicting one or the other would be his fate should Barack Obama become a two-termer. As far as incendiary rhetoric by the rocker-hunter-conservative firebrand goes, this was pretty tame stuff.
He has referred to Obama as a "piece of s—t" and members of his administration as "criminals," and implored the president to "suck on my machine gun." The "dead or in jail" comment was notable mostly for prompting a visit by the Secret Service, a meeting Nugent laughed off as a pro forma check-in from agents he described as more star-struck than suspicious.