T. PAUL - Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura, in remarks published in the March issue of Playboy Magazine, says gun control advocates are ignorant about human nature.
Ventura, who has a permit to carry a concealed weapon, noted that he had a sign posted in his home reading ''We Don't Dial 911.''
''You think taking away our guns is going to eliminate man's hostility toward man? Not true,'' Ventura said in the interview. ''Gun control people don't know what they're talking about. They're ignorant. They believe things without researching or understanding.''
''I hear Rosie O'Donnell say, `Why should you be allowed to have a gun that shoots 20 bullets a second?' You can't,'' Ventura said. ''An assault weapon doesn't shoot 20 bullets a second. It's semiautomatic, the same as a deer rifle.''
''She's perpetuating a lie that half of the ignorant people out there are going to believe,'' he added.
Ventura made the comments last fall, and most of the interview was published in Playboy's November issue. He made headlines at that time for calling organized religion ''a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people.''
In the newly published portions, Ventura, whose election as Minnesota's governor on the Reform Party ticket shocked the political establishment, said the United States wanted to keep Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in power so it could maintain a presence in the Gulf region.
''We won't take him out. We have to have our military presence on the world's oil, which is our lifeblood,'' the former Navy SEAL said. ''If we don't have Saddam over there, the Arab nations are going to tell us to get lost.''
