In one U.S. town, residents are legally required to own guns and ammo

In Kennesaw, Georgia, it’s against the law not to own a gun. 

The city law, dating back to the 1980s, makes it a requirement for residents to own guns and ammo. 

Kennesaw’s gun law states: “In order to provide for and protect the safety, security and general welfare of the city and its inhabitants, every head of household residing in city limits is required to maintain 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 go around wearing it on your hip like the Wild Wild West,” Derek Easterling, the town’s three-term mayor, told BBC News. “We’re not going to knock on your door and say, ‘Let me see your weapon.’” 

The mayor told BBC that, according to his knowledge and that of multiple other local officials, there have been no prosecutions or arrests made for violating the 1982 law. 

The law is a source of pride for some and embarrassment for others. Most residents told BBC that the law keeps citizens safe as there were no murders in town in 2023, according to Kennesaw Police Department data. There were two suicides, however, involving guns.

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“If anything, criminals need to be concerned, because if they break into your home, and you’re there, they don’t know what you got,” customers at a local pizza joint argued. 

“It’s the attitude behind the guns here in Kennesaw that keep the gun crimes down, not the guns,” Blake Weatherby, a groundskeeper at the Kennesaw First Baptist Church, told the BBC. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a gun or a fork or a fist or a high heel shoe. We protect ourselves and our neighbors.”

At one point, Weatherby said he owned over 20 guns, but now he doesn’t own any. 

Pat Ferris, who joined Kennesaw’s city council in 1984 just years after the gun law was passed, said that it was created to be “more of a political statement than anything” and added that he isn’t sure “how many people even know that the ordinance exists.”

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Morton Grove, Illinois, became the first city in the U.S. to ban gun ownership, but Kennesaw became the first city to require it. Similar laws have been passed in at least four other U.S. cities: Gun Barrel City, Texas; Virgin, Utah; Nelson, Georgia and Nucla, Colorado. 

City council member Madelyn Orochena described the law as “a weird little factoid about our community.” 

“Residents will either roll their eyes in a bit of shame or laugh along about it,” she told the BBC.