I was looking at the history of gunpowder and guns on wikipedia, and a thought struck me. If a bronze-age civilization developed gunpowder, could they also develop bronze pistols and rifles?
I know that bronze cannons certainly existed in OTL, but I think that bronze handheld guns would be less economically feasible to manufacture due to the fact that making bronze at all requires gaining and combining copper and tin, which may come from distant sources from each-other. The idea of a bronze-age civilization with gunpowder has been explored in Guns of the Tawantinsuyu, but in that scenario the Incas only had cannons.
I know that bronze cannons certainly existed in OTL, but I think that bronze handheld guns would be less economically feasible to manufacture due to the fact that making bronze at all requires gaining and combining copper and tin, which may come from distant sources from each-other. The idea of a bronze-age civilization with gunpowder has been explored in Guns of the Tawantinsuyu, but in that scenario the Incas only had cannons.