Ted Nugent Will Attend State of the Union Address

Ted Nugent, the gun-loving, bow-hunting rocker whose staunch defense of Second Amendment rights and inflammatory insults of President Obama have made him a hero with many conservatives, will attend the president’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night.

Mr. Nugent, who is also a National Rifle Association board member, will be a guest of Representative Steve Stockman, a Texas Republican who recently made eadlines by threatening to file articles of impeachment against Mr. Obama if the president issued executive orders that strengthened gun control laws.

In a telephone interview from his ranch in Texas on Monday, Mr. Nugent said that he planned to sit in the House of Representatives gallery during the president’s speech and that he would hold a news conference afterward, an event that seemed likely to turn the decorous setting of the State of the Union into a tabloid spectacle.

But Mr. Nugent, an avid hunter and gun collector who once flirted with running for governor of Michigan, insisted that he would be on his best behavior.

“I will be there with a deep, abiding respect for the office of the presidency,” he said. “I’m not here to represent any specific cause other than freedom and independence and ‘we the people.’ ”

To illustrate his point, he noted that he would not be carrying any weapons as he usually does.

“I will go ! in at least 20 pounds lighter than I normally walk,” he said. “I will be going in sans the hardware store on my belt. I live a well-armed life, and I’ve got to demilitarize before I go.”

Mr. Stockman’s office released a statement saying that Mr. Nugent “speaks for millions of Americans who understand how the Second Amendment protects freedom and stops crime.”

But Mr. Nugent’s presence on Tuesday seemed likely to inflame emotions around the delicate issue of gun safety, in addition to raising some other concerns.

The House gallery will be filled with people affected by gun violence. Led by Representative Jim Langevin of Rhode Island, who was accidentally shot and paralyzed as a teenager, about 20 members of Congress have given away their gallery tickets to relatives and friends of people who died in a violent episode involving a gun.

Mr. Nugent also has a history of making provocative, even threatening, remarks about the president. Last year, speaking at an N.R.A. conerence, he said that he would either be “dead or in jail” if Mr. Obama was re-elected.

Mr. Nugent said Monday that he had not discussed his appearance at the State of the Union with anyone at the rifle association.

A spokesman for the Capitol Hill Police said he could not immediately comment on whether there was any reason to deny Mr. Nugent entry on Tuesday night.