> Guns make political or revenge-based assassinations relatively easy in a way knives do not.

Yes, the US has been very well known for its politicians (instead of e.g. middle schoolers) being routinely murdered by the gunners.

Seriously. Even in the places like Brazil, or Sub-Saharan Africa, the "powerful people" rarely get killed by the lynching mob — it's almost always the hired guns sent by some other powerful people. So, no, the general populace very rarely gets to exercise its violence on the elite, historically speaking. Sometimes it happens, but that's an aberration of the normal way of things.