Musician Ted Nugent is known for speaking his mind about the Second Amendment and hunting, but especially on politicians. He once said then-Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama should “suck my machine gun.” When President Obama was running for re-election in 2012, the rocker said during the National Rifle Association convention that, “If Barack Obama becomes the president in November, again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.” The statement attracted the attention of the Secret Service.

But after Wednesday’s shooting at a congressional baseball practice, Nugent, who spent his teenage years in Palatine, has decided to be “more selective with my rants and in my words.”

“At the tender age of 69, my wife has convinced me I just can’t use those harsh terms,” he said on the 77 WABC radio program Thursday. “I cannot and will not and I encourage even my friends, slash, enemies on the left, in the Democrat and liberal world, that we have got to be civil to each other.”

“I’m not going to engage in that kind of hateful rhetoric anymore.”

More recently his past comments about Obama and Hillary Clinton (“Obama & Clinton, that’s who. They should be tried for treason & hung.”) were invoked as what some saw as the right’s hypocritical outrage over images of Kathy Griffin holding a mask of a bloody, severed head in the likeness of President Donald Trump.

Nugent’s change of heart comes as some Republicans and Democrats have also called for more civil political discourse.

Trump called for national unity after Wednesday’s shooting, winning praise from even his late-night TV critic Stephen Colbert, who thanked the president for “responding to this act of terror in a way that gives us hope, whatever our differences.”

At the Congressional Baseball Game Thursday evening, Republican House Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin told CNN, “What we’re trying to do is tone down the rhetoric, lead by example and show people we can disagree with one another, we can have different ideas without being vitriolic, without going to such extremes.”

Standing next to Ryan, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California said, “Tonight we’re all Team Scalise,” referring to House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, who was shot during the attack and was reported to be in a critical condition. (His condition was upgraded to serious Saturday.)