Kennesaw, GA had a problem in the early 80's - too much crime. They were once a small town, they kind of blew up over the course of five years, and they had a crime problem. The amount of crime this town suffered was disproportionate to the population.
The town council finally decided enough was enough and they voted unanimously to pass a law mandating every head of household who was legally able to do so - except conscientious objectors - HAD to buy a gun for home protection. This was in 1982 and since that time, the city of Kennesaw has had only three murders: two with knives and one with a gun. In 26 years, they've had just THREE murders. There have been no accidental shootings, everyone is required to take a free gun ownership course and the crime rate plummeted the first year the law was enacted, if I recall correctly, by 78%.
To be fair, this isn't a law that's heavily enforced. The police don't go door to door to make sure everyone has a gun. But, and this is a big but, the criminals don't know who's armed on the other side of the door in that house they're thinking of breaking into and who isn't. The odds of being shot while committing a crime increased exponentially when Kennesaw passed that law back in the early 80's.
I was reading an online board the other day that gravitated to this topic. People point fingers and scream and yell when something like the Virginia Tech massacre happens that we need more gun control. Someone on the board I was reading made a statement along the lines of, "Had there been one student in the area of these shootings who was permitted to carry a gun on campus, how many lives would have been saved with a well-placed shot towards the gunman?" We'll never know because the tree-hugging liberals in the world don't want guns in the hands of LAW-ABIDING citizens, they just want criminals to have them.
Recently, someone walked into a Wendy's in West Palm Beach, FL and shot up the place killing one customer and injuring four others before he killed himself, saving the good state of Florida millions in housing him and dealing with his appeals on his way to a lethal injection. The man he killed was a 28-year-old father who was making a return trip to get a toy for his child. He was a member of the local fire-rescue department and seems to have been a good man. Dead because someone was having a bad day. Had there been someone in that restaurant with a legally owned and carried gun, might this man's life have been saved? We'll never know and his kids get to grow up without their father.
Seems to me we don't need MORE gun control but less. My husband and I own guns. We live less than a mile from the Mexico border and illegals aliens run amok around us, even going so far as to show up on our doorstep or steal my chickens for dinner. If they break into our house with ill intent, I can guarantee you they'll go out on a stretcher with one more hole in them than they came in with.
Kennesaw, GA is the perfect example of responsible gun ownership and it's proving to the world that guns can actually save lives. The only time a gun is truly dangerous is when it's in the hands of a person who either doesn't know what they're doing or someone who is using the gun to commit a crime thereby meaning the gun probably isn't legally owned anyway.
Wake up people and realize... We don't need more gun control for those buying them legally, we need to get the guns out of the hands of criminals. Barring that, we need to make sure the average citizen can protect himself, herself and their families. If we don't do that, and soon, the only people who will have guns will be the criminals, and they'll take over the country.
