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exist Kennesaw, Georgiathis is illegal no Own a gun.
City laws dating back to the 1980s require residents to own guns and ammunition.
Kennesaw’s gun laws It states: “In order to safeguard and protect the safety, security and general welfare of the city and its inhabitants, every head of household residing within the city limits shall be required to possess firearms and ammunition.” The law excludes persons with mental or physical disabilities, persons with felony convictions or residents with conflicting religious beliefs.
“It’s not like the Wild West and walking around with it on your hip,” said Derek Easterling, the town’s three-term mayor. told bbc news. “We’re not going to knock on your door and say, ‘Show me your weapons.'”
A city law in Kennesaw, Georgia, since 1982 requires residents to own firearms and ammunition. (Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The mayor told the BBC that as far as he and several other local officials were aware, no one had yet been charged or arrested for violating the 1982 law.
The law makes some people proud and others embarrassed. Most residents told the BBC that the law kept citizens safe as there were no murders in the town in 2023, according to the Kennesaw Police Department. However, two suicides involved firearms.
“If anything, criminals have something to worry about because if they break into your home and you’re there, they don’t know what you’re getting,” argued a customer at a local pizza shop.
“It’s the attitude behind the guns in Kennesaw that inhibits gun crime, not the guns themselves,” Blake Weatherby, groundskeeper at First Baptist Church in Kennesaw, told the BBC. “Whether it’s a gun, a fork, a fist or a high-heeled shoe, it doesn’t matter. We protect ourselves and our neighbors.”
The mayor told the BBC that as far as he and several other local officials were aware, no one had yet been charged or arrested for violating the 1982 law. (Associated Press)
Weatherby has said he once owned more than 20 guns, but now he has none.
Pat Ferris, who joined the Kennesaw City Council in 1984 a few years after the gun law was passed, said the law was intended to be “more of a political statement,” adding, He wasn’t sure “how many people knew that” the ordinance existed. “
Blue state gun crackdown seen as threat to law-abiding homeowners
Morton Grove, Illinois, became the first city in the United States to ban gun ownership, and Kennesaw became the first to require gun ownership. At least four other cities in the United States have passed similar laws: Gun Barrel City, Texas; Virgin, Utah; Nelson, Georgia; and Nucla, Colorado.
City Council member Madelyn Orochena described the law as “a weird little fact about our community.”
“Residents will either roll their eyes in shame or laugh it off,” she told the BBC.
