Larry Copeland, @ByLarryCopeland, USA TODAY

Kennesaw%2C Ga.%2C spokeswoman says law %27was a symbolic gesture%27

Exemptions are broad%2C including those who don%27t want to own a gun

Nelson%2C Ga.%2C officials say law a reaction to police-response times

KENNESAW, Ga. — The exception-riddled mandatory gun-ownership law just passed by the town of Nelson, 33 miles to the north, is modeled on a similar law enacted more than three decades ago by the city of Kennesaw.

In 1982, Kennesaw was a city of about 5,000, "a rural population of Southern conservatives, strong Second Amendment advocates," city spokeswoman Pam Davis says. The city enacted the measure in response to a law passed in Morton Grove, Ill., that outlawed gun ownership.

"When the law was passed, it was common knowledge that it was not going to be enforceable," Davis says. "It was a symbolic gesture."

Still, the crime rate, not that high to begin with, plummeted after the law was enacted — by 89%, compared with a 10% drop statewide, according to published accounts. Davis says there were 11 burglaries per 1,000 residents before the law, 2.7 after. Despite slight fluctuations, she says, crime here "is significantly lower" than similar-sized Georgia cities.

No one has ever been prosecuted under the law.

Nelson, a former marble-quarrying town of about 1,400, is hoping for similar results. The five-member City Council unanimously on Monday passed the Family Protection Ordinance requiring "heads of households to maintain firearms … in order to provide for the emergency management of the city."

But the exemptions are pretty broad: anyone who has physical or mental disabilities, is a pauper, doesn't want to own guns or is a convicted felon. And there are no penalties for violations.

It's a "deterrent," says Police Chief Heath Mitchell, the town's only police officer. "I'm not going to be going from house to house asking people if they have a gun."

Nelson officials say they wanted the measure because their town straddles the Cherokee-Pickens county line, which can lead to slower response times. Also, during the debate over guns in the aftermath of the Newtown, Conn., school massacre, they wanted to emphasize Nelson's commitment to the Second Amendment.

"With all of the talk about taking away guns, Nelson is telling our people, you've got a Second Amendment right to buy and keep arms," Councilman Jackie Jarrett says. "We're hoping it will deter crime."

Nelson officials acknowledge that there's not much crime in their area, where the Georgia Marble Co., once supplied marble used in the Lincoln Memorial , St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York, the New York Stock Exchange and many of the tombstones in Arlington National Cemetery.

The Nelson ordinance is one of several similar laws around the USA that sprang up in the wake of the Newtown massacre, which sparked an intense debate on gun rights:

Spring City, Utah, with a population near 1,000, passed an ordinance earlier this year recommending that every household own a gun.

Last month, voters in Byron, Maine, rejected a law that would have required each household in the 140-person town to own a gun and ammunition. About 50 people voted, all of them in opposition, including the selectwoman who proposed the measure. According to the Lewiston, Maine, Sun Journal, Selectwoman Anne Simmons-Edmunds said the measure was initially tongue-in-cheek, and then it became serious.

In Nelson, Mitchell says he hopes that with the law on the books, his town will just get back to normal. "We're just ready for things to slow down," he says.

That might not happen.

More than three decades after Kennesaw enacted its gun law, the measure still draws visitors to the city. It has grown to 30,000, is now a suburb of Atlanta and home to the state's third-largest university, Kennesaw State University, Davis says.

"We still get visitors (interested in the law), not only from other cities around the country, but we constantly get foreign visitors from the international press," she says. "Japan, Russia, Canada, France — another week, another foreign journalist."