This is the way the whole country was, when I was born (and I’m not yet 50 years old). So sad... Well, not really, New York City, Chicago and other urban hell holes had some pretty restrictive gun control even in 1950. Look up "Sullivan Act" for example. Passed in 1911, it gave local (read New York City) authorities control over who could and could not be armed. It was intended to block "carry while Italian", and to ensure that only Sullivan's cronies in New York City were armed, not the members of any rival gangs.
January 27, 1905 New York Times Editorial - [The proposed gun control] measure would prove corrective and salutary in a city filled with immigrants and evil communications, floating from the shores of Italy and Austria-Hungary. New York police reports frequently testify to the fact that the Italian and other south Continental gentry here are acquainted with the pocket pistol, and while drunk or merrymaking will use it quite as handily as the stiletto, and with more deadly effect. It is hoped that this treacherous and distinctly outlandish mode of settling disputes may not spread to corrupt the native good manners of the community.
Even then, the New York Slimes was a big advocate of citizen disarmament. BTW, although it was promised that homicides would drop after passage of the act, they did not.
I understood the Sullivan Act to really be for the purpose of disarming blacks so that they couldn’t fight back against Tammany Hall and the rest of the crooked democrat machine in New York.