MORTON GROVE TO KENNESAW: HOPE FOR THE NEW YEAR

backwoodshome.com ^ | 31 December, 2009 | Massad Ayoob

[marktwain]

My Christmas rounds encompassed Morton Grove, Illinois and Kennesaw, Georgia this year, which is a little like a Cold War combatant going from Moscow to Washington, DC in the same week. Advocates of gun owners’ civil rights well remember that Morton Grove was the first municipality to ban private ownership of handguns, “back in the day.” But we also remember that after the landmark US Supreme Court decision in Heller in 2008, Morton Grove was among the first such communities to buckle and rescind the law. Significant Other and I were on Mark Walters’ radio show on 12-27-09 (downloadable from “Armed American Radio” at iTunes, or from Armed American Radio and I said on the air that folks like us speaking from Morton Grove with handguns in our hotel room felt like General Sherman doing a talk show from occupied Atlanta, ‘cause our side WON, dammit!

A couple of days later we stopped for a hot dog at an iconic Georgia restaurant in Kennesaw, a satellite community north of Atlanta and the first municipality to pass a law requiring all law-abiding citizens to own a firearm. It was as symbolic as the Morton Grove law – no one to my knowledge has ever been brought to court for NOT owning a gun when they lived in Kennesaw – but after that law was passed, violent crime against individuals plummeted there, and has stayed down. Another victory for our side? You bet!

[marktwain]

Massad always has interesting things to say.

[Erik Latranyi]

AS someone who has also been in both Morton Grove and Kennesaw, the differences are striking.

First, there are more Chicago suburbs that make you feel uncomfortable when disarmed than suburbs that make you feel comfortable. Atlanta suburbs are almost exactly the opposite, most make you feel OK if you are not carrying.

Second, liberals have had their chance at their vision of utopia in these communities.....and the results are all the same....crime, poverty and blight......just think Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia.

Finally, conservatives have had their chance, especially in the south, demonstrating how firearm ownership does not turn the neighborhood into the wild west.

[marktwain]

Actually, the wild west was not as wild as most think from watching fiction on tv and in the movies. I would gladly trade the crime rates in the “wild west” for what we see in urban centers today.

[Don Corleone]

Morton Grove...”Mortgage Grove” as we called it years ago, was always a bastion of political stupidity.