The town in Georgia where everyone has to own a gun

Kennesaw, Georgia has all the small-town features one might imagine in the American South.

There’s the smell of baking cookies wafting from Honeysuckle Biscuits & Bakery and the roar of a nearby railroad train. It’s where newlyweds leave handwritten thank-you cards in cafés, praising the “relaxed” atmosphere.

But there’s another aspect of Kennesaw that some may find surprising: a city law dating back to the 1980s that legally requires residents to own guns and ammunition.

“It’s not like you wear it on your hip like the Wild Wild West,” said Derek Easterling, the town’s three-term mayor and self-described “retired Navy man.”

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

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

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

To the knowledge of Mayor Easterling, and several local officials, there have been no prosecutions or arrests for violations of Title II, Section 34-21, which went into law in 1982.

No one the BBC spoke to was able to specify what penalty would be imposed if the law was violated.

However, the mayor insisted: “It’s not a symbolic law. I don’t care about things just for show.”

For some, the law is a source of pride, a sign of the city’s embrace of gun culture.

For others, it is a source of embarrassment, a page in a chapter of history that they would like to move on from.

But the belief among city residents about the gun law is that it keeps Kennesaw safe.

“If anything, criminals should be worried, because if they break into your house, and you’re there, they won’t know what you’ve got,” customers eating pepperoni slices at their local pizza shop will suggest.

There were no homicides in 2023, according to Kennesaw Police Department data, but there were two suicides involving firearms.

Blake Weatherby, groundskeeper at Kennesaw First Baptist Church, has different ideas about why violent crime is down.

“It’s the attitude behind the guns here in Kennesaw that keeps gun crime down, not the firearms,” Weatherbee said.

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

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

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

A 1982 New York Times op-ed described Kennesaw officials as “cheerful” about passing the law, but noted that “Yankee criminologists” were not.

Penthouse Magazine ran the story on its cover page with the phrase Gun Town USA: An American town where it is illegal to own a gun printed over a photo of a blonde woman 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, its existence has all but faded from consciousness, Mr. Ferris said.

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

In the same year that the Arms Act came into effect, Mr. Weatherby, the church groundskeeper, was born.

He remembers his childhood where his father would jokingly tell him: “I don’t care if you don’t like guns, this is the law.”

“I learned that if you’re a man, you have to have a gun,” he said.

Now 42, he was 12 when he first shot.

“I almost dropped it because it scared the hell out of me,” he said.

Mr Weatherby owned more than 20 guns at one point, but now said he didn’t own any. He’s sold them over the years — including one his father left him when he died in 2005 — to get through tough times.

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

One place he could have gone to sell his firearms was the Deercreek Gun Shop on Kennesaw Main Street.

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

He said it was a family business opened by his father and grandfather, both of whom can still be found there today; His father is in the back recovering firearms, his grandfather is in the front relaxing in a rocking chair.

For obvious reasons, Rabon is a big fan of Kennesaw’s gun law. It’s good for business.

“The great thing about firearms is that people buy them for self-defense, but a lot of people like art or Bitcoin — which are rare things,” he said enthusiastically.

Among the dozens and dozens of guns hanging on the wall for sale are black, double-barrelled shotguns — similar to muskets — and a few 19th-century Winchester rifles that “they don’t make anymore.”

In Kennesaw, the gun fan base has a broad spectrum that extends far beyond gun store owners and middle-aged men.

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

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

However, Ms. Welsh is not fond of Kennesaw’s gun law.

“I feel embarrassed when I hear people talking about gun legislation,” Ms. Welch said. “It’s just an old Kennesaw thing to hold on to.”

She hoped that when outsiders thought of the city, they would remember parks, schools and community values ​​— not a gun law “that makes people uncomfortable.”

“There’s a lot in Kennesaw,” she said.

City Councilwoman Madeleine Orochina agrees that the law is “something people would rather not advertise.”

“It’s just a weird little fact about our community,” she said.

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