Monday January 31 5:41 PM ET

ST. PAUL, Minn. (Reuters) – Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, in remarks published in the March issue of Playboy Magazine, says gun control advocates are ignorant about human nature.

The one-time professional wrestler, 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” — apparently to warn intruders that he will take care of them himself rather than calling police.

“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 (talk show host) 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 oil-rich 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.”

Ventura told the magazine he favored cremation, calling cemeteries “the biggest waste of land going”; said he only drank alcohol once or twice a year, but when he did, it was to get drunk; and predicted that if marijuana were legalized, “we could build all the pro stadiums we’d need and probably a bunch of schools too” with the profits.

Asked if he had ever “lusted” in his heart — something that President Carter once confessed to in an interview with the same magazine — Ventura said:

“You can look all you want. It’s that old thing: You can look at every new car, just don’t stick the key in the ignition. That’s human nature.”

Asked if he and his wife had ever “fooled around” in his office at the state capitol building, Ventura said: “No, I can do anything I want, but we’ve never had the opportunity. Not saying we wouldn’t.”

Reuters/Variety