Gun ownership recommended

From today's New York Times: a small town in Idaho is considering changing its city code to recommend that every household own a gun. Apparently after watching all the looting that happened during Hurricane Katrina, they decided that we'd all be a lot safer if everyone had a gun, instead of just some fraction of the population. Funny, I drew the opposite conclusion - I think we'd all be a lot better off if nobody had a gun (except maybe the cops).

And once again, I am left wondering: how is it that in spite of having grown up in rural America that this is a completely alien world to me?