Firearm ownership was about as widespread in the UK as in the Us in 1900. The wave pf rioting and lower class armed violence in 1919 and the near civil war with the labor militants in 1920, 1924 and finally the General Strike of 1926 convinced both the Tories and what was left of the Liberals that the civilian population had to be effectively disarmed. The ‘gun control’ laws began in earnest. Britons today don't even know of the almost completely unregulated and very safe era of the Late Victorian period. I have had an older upper class Tory woman deny anything like that ever happened and literally could not understand the absolute rights written into the Bill of Rights (how did that get passed with people like Hamilton and Jay around?)
Yeah, the Brits were wondering that all the way back to England in 1783 rubbing their butt hurt bums.”I say, dashed if I know WHY those impertinent Yanks would go and give them selves the right to own a gun! What ever would they need them for?’’
There's no evidence whatever that that was so. There was always a cultural difference between the two countries on guns, dating from their respective conditions at the time when guns first became available on an industrial scale to the general public, say the last third of the 19th century.
At that time Britain was in the middle of the 'Pax Victoriana', a period of unprecedented peace and prosperity which lasted for nearly a century, There were few external threats, and no internal borders to defend. There was of course crime, but for the most part it was successfully controlled by the new (unarmed) police forces.
In those circumstances the average Briton never saw the need or wished to have a gun, except if he was a sportsman or a countryman needing to control vermin. (And it's the shotguns and hunting rifles suitable for those purposes which were always the most widely owned guns, as they remain today - they have never been banned, and countryside shooting sports are increasingly popular).
Handguns were certainly available, and indeed made in the UK (Webley etc). But the market was mostly to army officers (who at that time had to provide their own personal weapon) and to men going to live and work abroad. The idea of a gun as an normal item of domestic equipment for the defence of person or property simply never took hold as it did in the US.