This book is an attempt to unravel the relationship among legitimate violence, public law enforcement, and race through the lens of gun politics and gun policy. It is animated by data in three forms: newspaper and archive analysis, interviews with police chiefs, and observations of gun licensing processes. Data involving people and their lived experience are unruly and often contradictory. Sociological analysis demands that we—its authors—subordinate the messiness of lived experience, and the uneven schema used to navigate and make sense of it, to develop our parsimonious theoretical claims. But people, and their experiences, are not merely sociological categories, and unruly data are not just objects of analysis or grounds for narrative elaboration. Data and analysis always also stand as ethical claims, moral proclamations, and political stances. For different readers with their own distinctive experiences with guns, policing, and the politics of race, different portions of this book may be difficult to read and absorb. As author, I do not take for granted, and deeply appreciate, your willingness to tread these waters. Thank you.