My research project is based on the simple inquiry: how were guns regulated in the Colonial America? It is a question that is (relatively) easy to answer using primary sources; the who, what, where, when and how of early American gun regulation can be read right from the statutes. But the ease of the inquiry belies the magnitude of its implications. The Colonial statutes tell a story of fear and domination - a fragile and paranoid population of foreigners, trying desperately to exclude, suppress and subjugate every other they encountered. Firearm regulation provides a clear example of the modalities of power and violence that enabled the colonialist project.