I don't think you're right about how pervasive gun ownership was, due to changes in costs and wealth, and the ability to maintain guns in the days of corrosive

I don't think you're right about how pervasive gun ownership was, due to changes in costs and wealth, and the ability to maintain guns in the days of corrosive black gunpowder and corrosive percussion caps and primers (the WWII M1 Carbine was the first US weapon system to use non-corrosive primers). And of course blacks were largely disarmed post-Reconstruction, next up were post-Civil War immigrants starting around the last turn of the century, etc. See also Chicago post-McDonald and the nationwide sweep of shall issue laws has radically increased the utility of owning a handgun, now 43 states and ~72-3% of the population.