Offended by column on illegal sex toys

Both as a law-abiding citizen and as a retired law enforcement officer (31 years on the job), I was offended by the Dec. 16 article titled “Vibrators vs. firearms.”

This so-called article is the personal opinion of the author and belongs in the letters section. To print it as you did (as an article) lends Ms. Amy Johnson’s opinion an undeserved air of credibility by making it appear to be real news. If Ms. Johnson wants to buy sex toys instead of rifles for Christmas presents, that is her choice — but not mine and not that of millions of other Americans. Ms. Johnson is absolutely entitled to her opinion, but for your paper to package it as news is unacceptable.

The U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights is what makes us better than every other country in the world; among those critical Constitutional rights is our right to bear arms. While people like Ms. Johnson might not value that particular right, others of us very strongly do. There is no argument that murder of anyone is reprehensible, and the fact that criminals can obtain firearms is unfortunate. There are already many restrictions on firearm purchases, possession and carry: Pre-purchase background checks, restrictions on types of firearms available for sale to the general public, licensing of concealed pistol carry, prohibition of firearm possession by convicted felons, etc.

But further restrictions on legal firearms ownership without vigorous enforcement of the existing laws (such as those against illegal/straw-man purchases, against felons-in-possession, theft of firearms, and sentencing enhancements for using a firearm during a crime, etc.) will only penalize law-abiding citizens and restrict their ability to protect themselves from criminals.

Criminals will continue to illegally acquire weapons (and not just firearms) unless and until the prosecutors and the courts make examples out of each and every one (and their enablers) that comes to law enforcement’s attention. The right of self-defense is not merely theoretical. If one chooses, one can easily research and find myriad instances where a legally owned firearm saved citizens from harm at the hands of homicidal criminals. Make no mistake: Dialing 911 doesn’t always cut it. You are ultimately responsible for your own safety and well being.

Since I was unable to locate any amendment applicable to her sex toys, I suspect the Framers didn’t think that they were all that important — and I agree. The Framers, however, believed that the right to bear arms is important enough to be written into the Constitution — I agree with that as well. Maybe Ms. Johnson should focus her energy on the political process and work for ratification of a constitutional amendment more to her liking than the Second Amendment.

In the meantime, I am reserving my “moral outrage” for your newspaper — for giving Ms. Johnson an totally undeserved soapbox.

Bob Wojnicz, Federal Way

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Gun politics and sex toys don’t mix

As a younger reader, there are two things that bother me about the paper as I read it this morning.

First of all, it shocked me to see a title as vulgar as “Vibrators vs. firearms: What’s on your toy list?” printed in the Federal Way Mirror. This is an attention grabber I would expect to see in “The Stranger” or similar venues and not in my city’s local paper.

Don’t get me wrong, sex education has an important place in society. A few articles pertaining to safe sex for youth and tips for parents to give “The Talk” is great. But talking in depth about “sex toys” is too far for a public newspaper. There is a fine line in sex education from education to obscenity, and I feel columnist Amy Johnson has crossed it.

I was also angered by her repeated attacks on the Second Amendment rights to bear arms. The title alone suggests she is very biased against the responsible ownership of firearms by United States citizens. She asks if people are morally outraged that legal sales of semi-automatic firearms occur in 43 states. I’d like to be the first to say absolutely not. Why would I be morally outraged that I live in one of the last free countries where you can own firearms and exercise a right laid out by our forefathers?

She is also wrong in her usage of the term “assault rifle.” By definition, the rifle used to kill Seattle police officer Timothy Brenton (Kel-Tec SU-16) is not an assault rifle at all. The only reason she termed it as such is that it is semi-automatic operated and colored black. She is adding to the common public misconception that all black semi-automatic rifles are bad and must be banned. Another disturbing fact is that she uses the Brady campaign as her source. They are extremely biased on the subject, and she could have dug a little deeper to find legitimate and balanced sources.

In short, firearms politics and sex toys don’t mix in The Mirror and leave a bad taste in my mouth. My patience with Amy Johnson’s “shock” content over the last year or so has come to a head. It’s time to either clean up her articles for public decency or leave The Mirror.

Dan Reiff, Federal Way

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Assault with a deadly vibrator

Kudos to Amy Johnson and her Dec. 16 Sex in the Suburbs column for breaking the record. The record: The dumbest article ever published in The Mirror.

She talked about how unfair it is that some states ban the sale of vibrators while allowing the sale of assault rifles. Oh the humanity.

Here is something you might want to think about. When you hear someone breaking down your door to enter your home (a thing that happens frequently), what would you rather have in your hand: 1) An assault rifle, or 2) your wife’s vibrator?

If you chose number 2, you are betting that the intruder is a crazed nymphomaniac. I’ll go with number 1, thank you.

I don’t recall the Bill of Rights guaranteeing me the right to have a vibrator, but I think I remember that I have a right to have a gun.

It’s a comparison of apples and oranges, and my first thought was, so what? This ran, not as an editorial on that page, but as a news story on page 4. The first story in the crime blotter on the same page was a story about a woman’s husband who violated a restraining order and entered her house. He successfully ran from the police. Lucky guy — he could have been hit in the head with a vibrator.

Bill Pirkle, Federal Way

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Amy’s wrong on weapons argument

Amy Johnson makes several false comments and assertions in her sexuality column that gun control advocates use to perpetuate the gun debate in the United States. Her claim that American currency “is better spent on opposing semi-automatic assault weapons” than buying, owning and using sex toys is absurd. Did she really just advocate favoring dildo use over protecting and retaining the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights? In District of Columbia v. Heller, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment secures an individual right to own and possess guns in a home for self-defense.

No Amy, I am not outraged that there is no ban on the sale of “semiautomatic assault weapons” in our state and the other 42 states that allow their sale. This ambiguous and politically charged term would refer to all but one of the many weapons I use (legally) on a regular basis. Semi-automatic assault rifles, in reality, have reduced lethality than hunting rifles (many of which are also semi-automatic, just like my shotguns and pistols). The bullet size (caliber) of a “semi-automatic assault rifle” is smaller than a hunting rifle; the muzzle velocity (the speed at which the bullet leaves the barrel of the gun) is lower, thus leading to less powerful impacts at the target and a reduced overall range. Like many gun opponents, your article suggests that semi-automatic assault weapons are more dangerous than other guns — they are not.

Your query, “Is it really more important for our government to promote virginity than to save lives?” leads your readers to believe the (false) allegation that stricter gun control laws actually reduce homicide rates. Although Brazil has 100 million fewer citizens than the United States, and more restrictive gun laws, there are 25 percent more gun deaths; other sources indicate that homicide rates due to guns are approximately four times higher than the rate in the United States. Oh yeah, but that’s not the U.S. Here, the most thorough analysis of the impact of gun control laws, by Gary Kleck, covered 18 major types of gun control and every major type of violent crime or violence (including suicide), and found that gun laws generally had no significant effect on violent crime rates or suicide rates.

There is a quote in Thomas Jefferson’s tome “Commonplace Book” that reads, “… laws that forbid the carrying of arms … disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes … Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”

Please Amy, simply because you are neither inclined or determined to commit crimes, don’t strip me of my constitutional right to defend against others (like Maurice Clemmons) who would do so.

Dan Altmayer, Major, U.S. Army (Retired), Federal Way