The BBCKennesaw, Georgia has all the small towns one could imagine in the American South.
Honeysuckle Biscuits & Bakery is filled with the smell of baking biscuits and the rumble of a nearby railway train. It's where newlyweds leave handwritten thank-you cards in coffee shops praising the “cozy” atmosphere.
But there's another aspect of Kennesaw that some might find surprising — a city law from the 1980s that legally requires residents to own guns and ammunition.
“It's not like you're walking around with it on your hip like the Wild and Wild West,” said Derek Easterling, the city's three-term mayor and self-described “retired Navy guy.”
“We're not going to knock on your door and say, 'Let me see your gun.'
Kennesaw's gun law clearly states: “To provide for and protect the safety, security and general welfare of the city and its inhabitants, every head of a household residing within the city limits shall maintain a firearm, together with 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 numerous local officials, there have been no prosecutions or arrests for violations of Article II, Section 34-21, which took effect in 1982.
And no one the BBC spoke to could say what the penalty would be if found in breach.
Still, the mayor insisted: “This is not a symbolic law. I don't do 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 in a chapter of history they want to move beyond.
But the main belief among city residents about the gun law is that it keeps Kennesaw safe.
Patrons eating pepperoni slices at the local pizzeria will offer, “If nothing else, criminals should be worried because if they break into your home and you're there, they don't know what you've got.”
In 2023 there were no homicides, according to the Kennesaw Police Department, but there were two gun suicides.
Blake Weatherby, a groundskeeper at First Baptist Church in Kennesaw, has mixed thoughts about why violent crime might be low.
“It's the attitude behind guns here in Kennesaw that keeps gun crime down, not the guns,” Mr. Weatherby said.
“It doesn't matter if it's a gun, a fork, a fist or a high heel 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 US city to ban gun ownership, Kennesaw became the first city to require it, sparking national news headlines.
1982 Opinion of the New York Times described Kennesaw officials as “cheerful” about passing the law, but noted that the “Yankee criminologists” were not.
Penthouse magazine published the story on its front page with the words Gun Town USA: An American town where it is illegal not to own a gun printed over an image of a blonde woman in a bikini.
Similar gun laws have passed in at least five cities, including Gun Barrel City, Texas, and Virgin, Utah.
In the 40 years since Kennesaw's gun law was passed, Mr. Ferris says, its existence has all but faded from consciousness.
“I don't know how many people even know the ordinance exists,” he said.
In the same year that the Arms Act came into force, Mr. Wetherby, the churchwarden, was born.
He recalled his 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 should own a gun,” he said.
Now 42, he was 12 years old when he first fired a gun.
“I almost dropped it because it scared me so much,” he said.
Mr Weatherby has owned more than 20 guns at one time but now said he owns none. 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 go to sell his firearms is the Deercreek Gun Shop located on Kennesaw's Main Street.
James Rabun, 36, has worked at a gun shop since graduating high school.
It's the family business, he said, started by his father and grandfather, both of whom can still be found there today; his father in the back restoring firearms, his grandfather in the front relaxing in a rocking chair.
For obvious reasons, Mr. Rabun is a fan of the Kennesaw gun bill. It's good for business.
“The cool thing about firearms,” he said with genuine enthusiasm, “is that people buy them for self-defense, but a lot of people like them as works of art or as bitcoin — things that are in short supply.”
Among the dozens and dozens of weapons hanging on the wall for sale are double-barreled black powder rifles – similar to muskets – and several Winchester rifles from the 1800s. “they-don't-make-these-anymore”.
In Kennesaw, gun fans have a broad reach that extends beyond gun shop owners and middle-aged men.
Chris Welsh, a mother of two teenage daughters, has no qualms about owning a gun. She hunts, belongs to a gun club and shoots at the local gun range with her two girls.
“I'm a gun owner,” she admitted, listing her inventory, which includes “a Ruger pistol, a Baretta, a Glock, and about half a dozen rifles.”
Ms. Welsh doesn't like Kennesaw's gun law, though.
“I feel embarrassed when I hear people talk about gun laws,” Ms. Welsh said. “It's just an old Kennesaw thing to grab onto.”
She wished that when outsiders think of the city, they think of the parks, the schools and the community values — not the gun law “that makes people feel uncomfortable.”
“There is so much more to Kennesaw,” she said.
City Councilwoman Madeline Orocena agrees that the law is “something people would rather not advertise.”
“It's just a weird little fact about our community,” she said.
“Residents will either roll their eyes in shame or laugh along with it.”