A town in Georgia where everyone should own a gun

Kennesaw, Georgia has every little town imaginable in the American South.

From Honeysuckle Biscuits & Bakery wafts the smell of biscuits and the rumble of a nearby train. This is where newlyweds leave handwritten thank-you cards in coffee shops praising the “cozy” atmosphere.

But there’s another aspect of Kennesaw that might seem odd — a city law from the 1980s that legally requires residents to carry guns and ammunition.

“It’s not something you walk around with it on your hip like in the Wild, Wild West,” said Derek Easterling, the city’s three-term mayor and self-described “retired Navy guy.”

“We’re not going to knock on your door and say, ‘Let me see your guns.’

Kennesaw’s gun law clearly states: “In order to provide for and protect the safety, security and general welfare of the city and its inhabitants, every head of a household residing within the city limits shall possess a firearm together with ammunition.”

Residents with mental or physical disabilities, felony convictions, or controversial religious beliefs are exempt from the law.

To the knowledge of Mayor Easterling and many local officials, there have been no prosecutions or arrests for violations of Article II, Sections 34-21, which took effect in 1982.

And no one the BBC spoke to could say what the penalty would be for the breach.

However, the mayor insisted: “This is not a symbolic law. I don’t do things for show.”

For some, the law is a point of pride, a sign that the city has adopted a gun culture.

For others, it’s a source of embarrassment, a page in a chapter of history they want to move on from.

But the top opinion among townspeople about the gun law is that it keeps Kennesaw safe.

Visitors eating pepperoni slices at a local pizzeria will offer, “If anything, criminals should be worried because if they break into your house and you’re there, they won’t know what you got.”

According to the Kennesaw Police Department, there were no homicides in 2023, but there were two gun-suicides.

Blake Weatherby, an overseer at First Baptist Church in Kennesaw, has a different take on why violent crime may be low.

“It’s the attitude toward guns here in Kennesaw that deters gun crime, not guns,” Mr. Weatherby said.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s a gun or a fork or a fist or high heels. We protect ourselves and our neighbors.”

Pat Ferris, who joined the Kennesaw City Council in 1984, two years after the law was passed, said the law was created “more as a political statement than anything else.”

After Morton Grove, Illinois became the first city in the U.S. to ban gun ownership, and Kennesaw became the first city to require it, making national headlines.

In a 1982 New York Times article Kenes officials were described as “cheerful” about the passage of the law, but it was noted that the “Yankee criminologists” were not.

Penthouse Magazine published an article on its cover with the words Gun Town USA: an American town where it is illegal to own a gun printed over an image of a blonde in a bikini.

Similar gun laws have been passed in at least five cities, including Gun Barrel City, Texas, and Virgin, Utah.

In the 40 years since Kennesaw’s gun law was passed, Mr. Ferris said, its existence has largely faded from consciousness.

“I don’t know how many people even know this ordinance exists,” he said.

In the same year that the Arms Act came into force, Mr. Wetherby, a churchwarden, was born.

He recalled his childhood when his father half-jokingly told him, “I don’t care if you don’t like guns, it’s the law.”

“I was taught that if you’re a man, you should have a gun,” he said.

He is now 42 years old, and he first fired a gun at the age of 12.

“I almost dropped him because he scared me so much,” he said.

Mr Wetherby had more than 20 guns but now said he does not own any. Over the years, he sold them – including the one his father left him after he died in 2005 – to make ends meet.

“I needed gas more than guns,” he said.

One of the places he could go to sell his firearms is the Deercreek Gun Shop located on Main Street in Kennesaw.

James Rabun, 36, has worked at the gun shop since he graduated high school.

According to him, it is a family business started by his father and grandfather, both of whom can still be found there today; his dad in the back restoring a firearm, his grandfather in the front relaxing in a rocking chair.

For obvious reasons, Mr. Rabun is a supporter of the Kennesaw gun law. It’s good for business.

“The interesting thing about firearms,” ​​he said with genuine enthusiasm, “is that people buy them for self-defense, but a lot of people like them like works of art or bitcoins, things of scarcity.”

Among the dozens and dozens of weapons displayed on the wall for sale are double-barreled black powder guns – similar to muskets – and several 1800s they-don’t-make-those-anymore Winchester rifles.

In Kennesaw, gun fandom has a wide reach that goes beyond gun shop owners and middle-aged men.

Chris Welsh, a mother of two teenage daughters, is not shy about owning a gun. She hunts, is a member of a gun club, and shoots at a local range with her two girls.

“I’m a gun owner,” she admitted, listing her inventory, which includes “a Ruger, a Baretta, a Glock, and about half a dozen shotguns.”

Still, Ms. Welsh doesn’t like Kennesaw’s gun law.

“I feel embarrassed when I hear people talk about gun laws,” Ms. Welsh said. “It’s just an old Kenesaw thing to hang on to.”

She wanted when outsiders think of the city, they think of parks, schools and community values, not a gun law “that makes people feel uncomfortable.”

“There’s a lot more to the Kennesaws,” she said.

City Councilwoman Madeline Orocena agrees that the law is “something people prefer not to publicize.”

“It’s just an amazing fact about our community,” she said.

“Residents will either roll their eyes in shame or laugh about it.”