Virgin Utah only has 350 residents. Kennesaw, over 3,000.
Virgin, Utah probably is more well known because it is 12 years more recent than the Kennesaw GA law.
It's been a while since I have given any thought to Kennesaw Georgia and it's philisophical opposite, Morton Grove Illinois.
http://www.firearmscoalition.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=285&Itemid=37
October 2008 Morton Grove became the first town in the U.S. to pass a flat out ban on the possession of handguns; in response, the town of Kennesaw, Georgia passed a gun law of their own in March of 1982, almost the exact opposite to the Morton Grove ordinance. Kennesaw required every head-of-household to keep at least one firearm and appropriate ammunition in their home. In other words, gun ownership was mandatory except for people who didn’t want to own a gunfor conscientous reasons.
Desite the two communities' demographic differences, the differences in their crime and accidental injuries statistics is telling.
This is just one of the web sites I found by Googling "Morton Grove Firearms" and "Kennesaw Georgia Firearms"
http://www.firearmscoalition.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=285&Itemid=37
With all of these disadvantages working against Kennesaw, how did the two communities actually fare?
Morton Grove’s relatively low crime rate went up by over 15% immediately after enactment of the ban (12% more than surrounding areas) and has held pretty steady at just a tad below the national average ever since. There has been no statistical indication of the handgun ban having any positive effect.
Kennesaw saw in 1982 74% reduction in crime against persons over the previous year. That rate then dropped 45% between 1982 and 1983.
While Morton Grove’s per capita crime rate took a dramatic jump, deviating substantially from regional and national averages, right after passage of their gun ban, Kennesaw’s crime rate did the opposite in an even more dramatic way. After Kennesaw’s gun law was enacted crime dropped dramatically – much faster than federal, state, or local trends – and leveled out well below national averages. In spite of a population increase from 5000 to almost 30,000 during the same period, Kennesaw’s crime rates remain significantly lower than national or area averages. And the people of Kennesaw didn’t have to use their mandated firearms to affect this dramatic change. The simple knowledge on the part of criminals that if they worked in Kennesaw they were choosing to work with an armed prospective victim pool was enough to convince them not to pursue their chosen professions there.
After the enactment of the firearms mandate in 1982, it took 15 years before there was a murder committed with a firearm in the town. As I (the author of the web site Jeff Knox, not Lost Sheep, me quoting from Mr Knox's article) recall, it was the result of two visitors who got into an argument in their motel room. One was insisting that a .25 automatic could not penetrate thick chest muscles like his and the other fellow decided to settle the argument and proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were both idiots.
I hope this illuminates the issue (at least from a different angle).
Lost Sheep
