IN Kennesaw, Georgiait’s against the law not own a gun.
The city’s law, which dates back to the 1980s, requires residents to own guns and ammunition.
Kennesaw the law on weapons states: “In order to ensure and protect the safety, security and general welfare of the city and its residents, every head of household residing within the city limits is required to have a firearm, together with ammunition.” The law excludes residents with mental or physical disabilities, felony convictions, or conflicting religious beliefs.
“It’s not like you’re walking around wearing it on your hip like in the Wild Wild West,” Derek Easterling, the city’s three-term mayor, he told BBC News. “We’re not going to knock on your door and say, ‘Let me see your weapon.'”
A city law dating back to 1982 requires Kennesaw, Georgia residents to own guns and ammunition. (Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The mayor told the BBC that, to his knowledge and the knowledge of many other local officials, there had been no prosecutions or arrests for breaches of the 1982 law.
The law is a source of pride for some, and shame for others. Most residents told the BBC that the law protects citizens since there were no murders in the city in 2023, according to data from the Kennesaw Police Department. However, two suicides involved weapons.
“If nothing else, criminals need to be worried because if they break into your home and you’re there, they don’t know what you have,” claimed customers at a local pizzeria.
“The attitude behind guns here in Kennesaw is stopping gun crime, not guns,” Blake Weatherby, groundskeeper at First Baptist Church of Kennesaw, told the BBC. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a gun or a fork or a fist or a high-heeled shoe. We protect ourselves and our neighbors.”
The mayor told the BBC that, to his knowledge and the knowledge of many other local officials, there had been no prosecutions or arrests for breaches of the 1982 law. (The Associated Press)
At one point, Weatherby said he owned more than 20 guns, but now he owns none.
Pat Ferris, who joined the Kennesaw City Council in 1984, just a few years after the gun law passed, said it was created to be “more of a political statement than anything else” and added that he wasn’t sure “how many people knows that the regulation exists.”
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Morton Grove, Illinois became the first city in the US to ban gun ownership, but Kennesaw became the first city to require it. Similar laws have been passed in at least four other US cities: Gun Barrel City, Texas; Virgin, Utah; Nelson, Georgia and Nucla, Colorado.
City Councilwoman Madelyn Orochena described the law as “a little weird fact about our community.”
“Residents will either roll their eyes in shame or laugh at it,” she told the BBC.
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