Ted Nugent announces a kinder, gentler Nuge in the wake of the Alexandria shootings

Well, it happened: We finally found something capable of making “Wango Tango” rocker Ted Nugent stop idly ruminating on how nice it would be for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to suck on the end of his machine gun, and all it took was a U.S. Representative getting shot in broad daylight. Nugent gave an interview today to a New York radio station, stating that, in the wake of the shootings yesterday in Alexandria, Virginia—which left GOP Rep. Steve Scalise in critical condition, and several others wounded—he was giving up his consistently violent brand of screaming-wahoo political rhetoric. “At the tender age of 69, my wife has convinced me that I just can’t use those harsh terms,” Entertainment Weekly quotes him as saying, although it fails to note if he punctuated his statement by sadly throwing up the horns.

Nugent has traditionally been almost as big a fan of using gun-related imagery in his various screeds as he is of guns themselves. (Although, to be fair, he’s sometimes restrained himself by calling for his political opponents to merely be hanged, instead.) His behavior was aggressive enough during the Obama administration that the Secret Service was eventually called in to investigate him, although nothing ultimately came of it. (Except Ted Nugent opening his mouth some more, which should be negative consequence enough for anybody.)

No more, though: “I’ve got to get my psyche in tune [so] that I can still hold the ground—and I can be feisty, I can be fiery, I can be passionate,” Nugent said. “But I will avoid anything that can be interpreted as condoning or referencing violence.” And while we might point out that Nugent didn’t feel similarly moved to “civility” by the Sandy Hook shootings, the Pulse nightclub shootings, or any of the hundreds of other mass shootings America has faced over the last several years, in the game of “Ted Nugent Shutting The Fuck Up For Once,” you take the wins that you can get.