TESTAMENT's BILLY: MUSTAINE 'Must Be Back On Drugs To Think What He Is Saying Makes Any Sense'

Members of TESTAMENT and BROKEN HOPE have slammed MEGADETH mainman Dave Mustaine for implying during a concert that Barack Obama was somehow responsible for recent mass shootings in Colorado and Wisconsin.

While performing with MEGADETH on August 7 in Singapore, Mustaine told the crowd, "Back in my country, my president is trying to pass a gun ban. So he's staging all of these murders, like the Fast And Furious thing down at the border and Aurora, Colorado, all the people that were killed there. And now the beautiful people at the Sikh temple."

He continued: "I don't know where I'm gonna live if America keeps going the way it's going because it looks like it's turning into Nazi America."

"I think he must be back on drugs to even think what he is saying makes any sense," TESTAMENT frontman Chuck Billy, whose band has toured with MEGADETH many times before, told New York's Daily News. "There is freedom of speech and there just putting your foot in your mouth."

"I'd like to see Mustaine face any of the victims from either tragedy and tell them that Obama did this to them," said BROKEN HOPE guitarist Jeremy Wagner. "In fact, Mustaine, tell that to Ashley Moser who had a bullet lodged in her throat, a gunshot wound to her abdomen, and lost her 6-year-old daughter Veronica Moser-Sullivan when James Holmes fired upon them.

"I'm one of thousands who wish Mustaine would just keep his volatile mouth shut," added Wagner.

"I find it hard to accept this diatribe at face value," former RIP magazine editor Lonn M. Friend told the Daily News. "I go back 25 years with Mustaine and have long found him to be both a creative and conscious artist, a spiritual man who has battled and survived some pretty savage demons. These accusations are lunacy and just don't sound like the evolved rocker I know. Maybe he broke a string."

During yesterday's appearance on InfoWars.com, a web site run by radio host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, Mustaine attempted to put his words in context and answer some questions. When asked what he really meant about what he said on stage, Mustaine explained, "To clarify things, no one can deny that there were criminal rogues in the administration. CBS News got the memos, Congress has the information and basically, Larry Pratt, the head of Gun Owners of America, who is a highly respected person, said that if they would stage 'Fast And Furious,' they'd be capable of staging anything. He continued, "And it was all done to blame the Second Amendment. We'd be fools not to look at this. Our U.S. border patrol agents were killed. And like I said, I was just quoting Larry Pratt. That's it bottom line."

Mustaine also admitted that he could have chosen different words to express himself. He told Jones, "In the heat of the moment, when you're onstage and you're talking, sometimes you're not as eloquent as you'd like to be. But like I said, I was just quoting what Larry said." He added, "We really need to investigate this and we need to have the Attorney General release the documents and find out who's responsible for this. People died and the democratic process says, 'Let's investigate this. Let's find out what's going on here.'"

Mustaine wrapped up the interview by saying, "I'm a patriot. I've always been controversial. I'm a political songwriter. And this wasn't done to hurt any of my fellow countrymen. I think that it's something that we really, really need to look into.

"I love our country and I respect it, my whole thing with this is that I think we should just look into it. I just think that we deserve to know the truth — that's it."