The Georgia town where everyone must own a gun

BBC

Guns – from antique rifles to Glocks – are James Rabun's family business

Kennesaw, Georgia has all the makings of a small town you could imagine in the American South.

There's the smell of baking cookies wafting from Honeysuckle Biscuits & Bakery and the rumble of a nearby train. It's the kind of place where newlyweds leave handwritten thank you cards in cafes, praising the “cozy” atmosphere.

But there's another aspect of Kennesaw that might surprise some: a 1980s city law that legally requires residents to own guns and ammunition.

“It's not like you wear it on your hip like in the Old West,” said Derek Easterling, the city's three-term mayor and self-described “retiree from the Navy.”

“We're not going to knock on your door and say, 'Show me your gun.'”

Kennesaw's gun law clearly states: “In order to ensure and protect the safety, security and general welfare of the city and its inhabitants, every head of household residing within the limits of the city is required to maintain a firearm, as well as ammunition. »

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

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

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

The mayor nevertheless insisted: “It's not a symbolic law. I don't like things just for show.”

For some, the law is a source of pride, a nod to the city's embrace of gun culture.

For others, it is a source of embarrassment, a page from a chapter of history that they wish to move past.

But townspeople's main belief about the gun law is that it keeps Kennesaw safe.

Customers eating pepperoni slices at the local pizzeria will suggest: “On the contrary, criminals should be worried, because if they break into your house and you are there, they don't know what you have.” . »

There were no murders in 2023, according to Kennesaw Police Department data, but there were two suicides involving a gun.

Blake Weatherby, groundskeeper at Kennesaw First Baptist Church, has different ideas about why violent crime might be low.

“It's the attitude behind guns here in Kennesaw that reduces gun crime, not the guns,” Mr. Weatherby 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.”

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

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

A 1982 New York Times opinion article described Kennesaw officials as “jovial” about the law's passage, but noted that “Yankee criminologists” were not.

Penthouse Magazine published the article on its cover page with the words Gun Town USA: An American Town Where It's Illegal Not to Own a Gun printed over an image 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 the gun law was passed in Kennesaw, Mr. Ferris said, its existence has all but faded from consciousness.

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

Blake Weatherby says growing up, his father told him “if you're a man, you have to own a gun.”

The same year the gun law came into effect, Mr. Weatherby, the church warden, was born.

He remembers a 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 have to own a gun,” he said.

Now 42, he was 12 the first time he fired a gun.

“I almost gave it up because it scared me so much,” he said.

Mr Weatherby owned more than 20 guns at one time, but said he no longer owned any. He sold them over the years, including the one his father left him when he died in 2005 to get through hard times.

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

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

James Rabun, 36, has worked at a gun store since he graduated from high school.

This is the family business, he says, opened by his father and grandfather, which can still be found today; his father in the back restoring guns, his grandfather in the front relaxing in a rocking chair.

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

“The cool thing about guns,” he said with sincere enthusiasm, “is that people buy them for self-defense, but a lot of people like them as works of art or as rare items in Bitcoin.”

Among the dozens and dozens of weapons hanging on the wall for sale are double-barreled, musket-like black powder rifles and a few “no longer made” Winchester rifles from the 1800s.

Deercreek Gun Shop is located next to a Confederate memorabilia store

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

Cris Welsh, a mother of two teenage daughters, has no shame in saying she owns a gun. She hunts, is a member of a shooting club, and shoots at the local shooting range with her two daughters.

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

However, Ms. Welsh doesn't like Kennesaw's gun law.

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

She wished that when outsiders thought of the city, they would talk about parks, schools and community values ​​and not gun laws “that make people uncomfortable.”

“Kennesaw has so much more to offer,” she said.

City Council member Madelyn Orochena agrees that the law is “something people would rather not publicize.”

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

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

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