You Will Be Armed

Georgia gun mandate

In April the city council of Nelson, Georgia, a town of 1,300 located 55 miles north of Atlanta, unanimously passed an ordinance requiring every head of household to maintain a firearm and ammunition. The ordinance is mainly symbolic. There is no penalty for failing to comply, and residents can opt out if they have "personal objections" to owning a gun. 

Nelson is not the first Georgia town to pass a gun mandate. In 1982 Kennesaw, Georgia, which lies 35 miles south, passed a virtually identical ordinance in response to a handgun ban in Oak Park, Michigan. In March residents of Byron, Maine, voted down a similar proposal. 

Nelson City Councilman Jackie Jarrett told ABC News the town's ordinance was aimed at reducing crime and reaffirming the community's commitment to the Second Amendment in response to the clamor for gun control that followed last December's elementary school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut.