OLYMPIA – Second Amendment activists came well-armed Friday to a Capitol Campus rally, where Washington legislators promised to protect broad access to firearms and speakers denounced President Barack Obama and gun control. With the Legislature considering proposals to ban some firearms and high-capacity clips or require background checks for all gun sales, some speakers urged the crowd to prepare for a fight over their gun rights.

A crowd of more than 1,000, many of them armed with rifles and pistols, rallied in support of gun-owner rights Saturday outside a Coeur d’Alene sporting goods store. It was a strong show of support for the Second Amendment on a cold and sunny day, and it came in response to sweeping new gun control proposals by the Obama administration following the Newtown, Conn., elementary school massacre last month.

Ted Nugent is heard loud and clear by millions of people each year, and we’re not even talking about the rock ’n’ roll music assault he’s been making on the ears of his fans for more than 40 years. The 63-year-old rock guitarist says he devotes all summer to concerts and about 10 months to hunting. Meantime, he takes no time off throughout the year from his favorite sports of “crushing liberals, destroying animal rights, defending Second Amendment rights and exposing the monsters who hold political office.”

Q. When did you know you had what it takes to be a standout musician? A. The whole rock ’n’ roll thang and guitar band thang was all so new when I started in the 1950s that no one knew. We just jammed with pure abandon to emulate Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bo Diddley and so many others that if you could deliver the spirit with the band,

Thom George may have been a foreigner in North Idaho, but he wasted little time in adjusting to the area’s outdoor-oriented lifestyle. After moving to a sprawling plot of countryside south of Coeur d’Alene roughly eight years ago, the Queens, N.Y., native immediately set out with an Idahoan-inspired shopping list to obtain a few necessities: his driver’s license, a pickup truck, one golden retriever and a 12-gauge shotgun.