Elizabethan and Jacobean legislators didn't get around to outlawing firearms, since it was such a novel thing to be able to carry one around rather than to have to wheel it onto the battlefield. The big social violence problem during Shakespeare's time was caused not by guns, but by swords, of the new super-sharp and supple Spanish and Italian varieties, with which young men were in the habit of challenging each other in taverns and alleyways
