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...on order of General Gage, the people of Boston turned in 2,674 small arms

So, we can infur from this that General Gage was one of the first pre-Brady, liberal, PC, gun-grabber. It looks like it started around April 1775 and continues today. Doubtless many other arms were concealed, as they would be today if the government tried to confiscate small arms.

A bit about Gage:

General Thomas Gage
By Jennifer S.

He was a British general and governor of Massachusetts at the beginning of the American Revolution. He was born in Gloucestershire, England, the second son of an Irish viscount of modest means. Gage joined the army in 1746 and was aide-de-camp to the Duke of Albemarle in Flanders and in Scotland. His capable service during the Seven Years War in the Braddock campaign, at Ticonderoga and Montreal, and in various administrative assignments, led to his appointment in 1763 as British commander-in-chief for North America.

While holding this position, he was named governor of Massachusetts in 1774, at the same time that Parliament passed the Coercive Acts in retaliation for the Boston Tea Party, which had happened the previous year.

Later, in a dispatch that reached him on April 14, 1775, Gage was ordered to take vigorous action, without reinforcements. This dispatch resulted in the march to Lexington and Concord on the morning of April 19, which resulted in the first engagement of the Revolution. Removed from command in October 1775, Gage returned to England, where he died on April 2, 1787. Not a great man, Gage was a brave soldier, a competent and devoted pubic servant.

I couldn't find a portrait of Gage, but I did find one of his American-born wife. It was said that he did not have the heart for the war against the colonies because of her.

In 1771, Copley left his native Boston for a six-month stay in New York, where he accepted numerous portrait commissions. His first subject was Margaret Kemble Gage, the American-born wife of General Thomas Gage, commander-in-chief of the British forces in North America (who had sat for a portrait by the artist in 1768).

Mrs. Gage wears a turbanlike swath of drapery, a silk caftan over a lace-trimmed chemise, and an embroidered belt - a Turkish-style costume that enhances her languid pose. Such clothing was fashionable at British fancy dress balls, but since masquerade balls were not held at the time in New York, Mrs. Gage would have had no occasion to wear the costume outside the studio. Her faraway gaze suggests pensive thought and intellectuality, implying that she was not preoccupied with trivial matters. This is the first painting in which Copley depicted a woman in such exotic clothing or in such a state of melancholic reverie.