In some places, they were encouraged to buy guns. If they were liable for military service (either for defence of their city, or a broader commitment), they were often required to own suitable weapons, such as crossbows, guns, pikes, halberds, and swords. As an attempt to enforce this requirement, households were surveyed to ensure that they had suitable weapons (and this could result in instruction to replace inferior weapons by more moderns ones (e.g., hook guns by arquebuses, halberds by pikes (when they were intended to serve as pikemen)). From the records of these, we have some quantitative data for weapons ownership.

From this data, it appears that most households in Germany (at least in many areas of Germany) had weapos. Sometimes, this was just a sword, but the weapons could be pikes or halberds, crossbows or guns. In mid-15th century (1445) Nördlingen, about 1 household in 16 owned a gun, and 1 in 19 a crossbow. Later in the 15th century (1488), this has increased to 1 in 5.5 households owning a gun, and 1 in 11 households a crossbow. Approximately a century later, it was approximately 1 in 4 households owning a gun. In the early 17th century, gun ownership increased to over 30%.

Some cities went further, and during the Thirty Years War required all households to own guns (e.g., Hamburg, Rostock, Frankfurt).

Those owning guns for military service were expected to be able to use them - they were expected to train. Guns were also owned for hunting and competitive target shooting. So guns were owned by ordinary citizens, and also fired by them.

To move away from Germany, to Japan, where the arquebus had been introduced in the mid-16th century, there was gun control by the state. Toyotomi Hideyoshi banned ownership of swords and guns by non-soldiers, his "sword hunt" of 1588. This disarmament was far from total, and many swords and guns remained in private hands. Farmers (if they needed guns for animal control) and hunters were still allowed to own guns. However, in the Edo Period, farmers were allowed to own guns if they required them, and early paperwork consisted of a written declaration that the gun was required and would be used properly. Hunters were also allowed to own guns. Edo itself had very restrictive gun laws. Away from Edo, many guns could be found in rural areas. For example, in 1745, the 955 households in the villages on Shiiba Mountain (in modern Miyazaki prefecture) owned 436 guns (for hunting).

Thus, we can see that governments were sometimes interested in controlling guns, and that gun ownership could depend on military service obligations, and on the importance of weapons for practical non-military use.

References:

For Germany: B. Ann Tlusty, The Martial Ethic in Early Modern Germany: Civic Duty and the Right of Arms, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

For Japan: Tamara Enomoto, "Giving Up the Gun? Overcoming Myths about Japanese Sword-Hunting and Firearms Control", History of Global Arms Transfer 6, 45-59 (2018)