CSGS Research

Firearms use and regulation in the 18th and 19th centuries: Modeling the Application of Historical Methods for Law and Policy in the Bruen Era

With the support of an $830,000 grant from Arnold Ventures, CSGS hired postdoctoral researchers Brennan Gardner Rivas, Evan Turiano, and Joseph Stoltz for a two-year, in-depth study of 18th and 19th century firearms laws and culture. Starting in 2024, they studied interrelationships of people, places, and arms across five diverse states (CA, CT, MS, OH, OK). The primary objective of the project is to create field guides for judges and others interested in this area of study. The project also promises to enrich historical understanding of the changing contexts, uses, and public attitudes towards firearms through data collection and analysis of archival and primary sources.

This project will be completed in late summer 2026. CSGS is planning a fall webinar to introduce its comprehensive project website and field guides. Details to come.

Engineering Safety into U.S. Firearms, 1750-2010: Inventions, Manufacturers, Outcomes, and Implications

A 2023 “Dangers and Opportunities of Technology” award of $150,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) supports a research project led by Tucker and Stephen Hargarten, MD (Medical College of Wisconsin’s Comprehensive Injury Center) on historical firearms patent records. Utilizing multiple tools and databases, the research will result in the first academic reports about the history of efforts to design safety into firearms and the nature of cultural and scientific discussions about them since 1750.

CSGS is partnering with Wesleyan’s Quantitative Analysis Center (QAC), to research U.S. patents related to firearm innovation since the founding of the U.S. Patent Office in 1802. Maryam Gooyabadi, an assistant professor at the QAC, is supervising students who are downloading data and developing a program to streamline analysis.

As part of this project, Tucker and Hargarten will study archives of how physician and public health leaders have responded to firearm safety projects and to what extent, if any, health professionals were involved in manufacturing safety tests.

How Modern Bullets Maximize Lethality

With a $26,000 grant from Arnold Ventures, CSGS completed a case study about the feasibility of designing a lethality index for non-military firearms. The aim of this study was to demonstrate proof of concept and ability to conduct rigorous scientific testing to quantify the terminal ballistics of a variety of bullets and firearms across a timeline of 1800s to the present. 

During 2025, Stephen Hargarten, of the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, and CSGS founding director Jennifer Tucker secured new funding to continue this research. The journal Vital City published an update about their project titled “How Modern Bullets Maximize Lethality”.  The article details their ongoing multidisciplinary study combining expertise from specialists who normally have not worked together, including trauma surgeons and historians of technology.

Faith and Firearms

Joseph Slaughter, assistant professor of history and former associate director of CSGS, is currently working on “Faith and Firearms”, his second book project. In close collaboration with assistant professor of the practice Maryam Gooyabadi and a small team of Wesleyan undergraduates, Slaughter is conducting a large-scale investigation of how Christian periodicals have cited firearms from the Civil War to the present and will be presenting a portion of his findings at the American Society of Church History in January 2027. This past year, he presented research at several conferences on Henry Ward Beecher – the most famous preacher of the mid-19th century – and his support for arming anti-slavery Kansas settlers in the 1850s.