Here are some thoughts regarding the recent murders at Sandy Hook.

The colossal arrogance and ignorance of elected officials astonish me. Mississippi Sen. Bilbo once offered a bill to simplify pi by reducing it from an unending decimal to the numeral three. If it had passed, wheels would have come off all over America.

Politicians pushing gun control are protected by guards with guns. Sen. Feinstein carried a gun in her purse before she went to Congress. Congresswoman Pelosi appointed Mike Thompson to solve our gun problems. That he owns a gun and served in Vietnam was cited for his qualifications. Really.

Talk about “assault weapons” being unnecessary for hunting is nonsense; the Constitution discusses keeping our guns to form a militia to defend ourselves from oppressive governments, not hunting. The greatest murder rate in the history came from citizens owning no guns and government owning all, i. e, Hitler and Stalin.

Switzerland, with about the world’s lowest crime rate, teaches citizens at an early age to use and carry guns for life.

The largest army in the history of the world consists of American civilian gun owners with three hundred million guns. That’s 60 times the size of our army in WWII. Efforts to remove their firearms would make our earlier Civil War look like a spitball fight.

Mass murderers are crazy, not stupid; they attack gun-free zones like schools and theaters. They don’t attack shooting galleries.

What if the young teacher, Victoria Soto, murdered at Sandy Hook, had been trained and armed with a gun to defend her students instead of just her unprotected body?

If my neighbor has a magazine holding a thousand rounds it’s no concern to me. However, if some nut comes at me with a magazine containing 10 rounds I want one with 20.

Jack the Ripper, Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer all used knives. The greatest mass murder in American history, 911, was accomplished with a few box cutters. What if all the passengers had been armed with pistols firing hard rubber bullets, extremely painful to hijackers but harmless to the airplanes? Likewise with those movie goers in Colorado.

Laws requiring guns to be kept in safes are elderly abuse. Old people with no children can’t pick up a safe and hit an armed intruder before getting shot.

Gun control laws are illogical; a person planning murder won’t surrender his guns because he fears a gun-carrying fine more than the death penalty.

Randy Ridgel lives in Kelseyville, Calif.