Kennesaw Laws

FedEx Shooting and the Debate Over Gun Ownership Laws - Washington Wire - WSJ:
(April 29, 2014)

There’s a sad twist to the shooting Tuesday morning at a FedEx facility in Kennesaw, Ga., where an employee injured six co-workers before turning the gun on himself. Kennesaw is one of several U.S. cities and towns that have an ordinance requiring every household to own a gun.

That's true.  It is always "sad" when a fellow employee "goes postal" and attacks his co-workers.  Sad, tragic, disheartening, and ... morbid.

Those adjectives are especially poignant in Kennesaw, where the town passed an ordnance in 1982 "... requiring each head of household to own and maintain a gun".

But as World News Daily reported almost 7 years ago exactly, in an April 19, 2007: article entitled "25 Years Murder Free in GUN TOWN USA",   that small Georgia town enjoyed over a quarter of a century of freedom from murder until, as the WSJ article says, "...  in 2010 a former employee of a Penske truck rental facility there shot five people, killing three."

Lacking other evidence, that seems to add up to 28 years without firearms violence.

Here in the small Oregon College town of Geekistan, we can't claim such a record.  And I wonder, how many other American towns, no matter how small, enjoyed such a lengthy respite from fatal mayhem?

Not many, I would guess.

So ... why now?  Why, in a town where each head of household is "...[required] to own and maintain a gun ...", would a successful attack be reported?

First, note that there are no laws requiring anyone to actually carry a gun.

Second, consider the evidence of this photo (taken from the original article):

See the signs?  Just forward of the armored walking figure (the picture was obviously taken after the shooting) there are not one, but TWO signs of a pistol in a red circle, with a diagonal slash.  This is the universal signal of a Gun Free Zone.

TWO "GFZ" signs?  That's fairly emphatic.

If you're crazy enough, or evil enough, to be looking for a place where it's 'safe' to go on a shooting rampage .... this is the insignia of "COME SHOOT ME, I CAN'T FIGHT BACK!"

Kennesaw tried, but couldn't hold back the tide of Political Correctness.

The municipal laws didn't cover self-protection in the workplace .. only in the home.

The poor bastards never had a chance.

That's sad.