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TLDR: What can modern governments do to force criminal gangs to use melee weapons instead of guns.

So I am writing a novel where the main character is pushed out of society, and is forced to join a criminal gang in order to survive. The story is set on modern day earth and guns are obviously dominant in the battlefield.

The problem is that I need to keep guns out of the hands of gangs because it will be too violent and nearly impossible for the main character to rise in hierarchy without a lot of luck. I want the gangs to fight using melee weapons (baseball bats, knives etc..). I thought about having strict laws for buying firearms; however, that would not stop gangs from making homemade guns.

Edit: I would like to clarify that the purpose of trying to remove gun is to prevent the likelihood of mass murders. While bats and knives may cause injuries; I believe they are less likely to cause deaths. I simply do not want luck to be the only reason why the main character has a successful criminal career. I feel like guns would take the hard work out of success for a criminal.

Real life solution - make guns scarce in your society

In a country like US, where there are plenty of guns among the citizens, it's a no-brainer for criminals to use guns too. If they choose melee weapons, they would quickly find themselves bringing a knife to a gunfight.

In a country like UK, where guns are harder to find, criminals largely resort to simpler weapons like knives. This does not necessarily makes UK safer than US, but dynamics of the crime is clearly different. Also note that "serious" criminals would try hard finding the guns anyways.

In addition, you may make gun detection systems ubiquitous (like in "Total Recall" movie), whereas melee weapons would be typically overlooked by automated systems.

My home country (China) has very strict gun control laws. Basically, normal citizen will not be allowed to buy, sell guns, or make it themselves. If guns are involved in a crime case (say, robbery), the consequence will be much more severe. Surely you'll never stop people from making guns themselves, but they won't necessary use guns in conflicts - 6 months in jail for street fight v.s. 10 years if you use guns, what would you choose?

Gangs still exists in China, and they fight using knives, bats, metal bars, etc.

It seems that strict gun control laws can help prevent people using guns in street fights.

Your question is essentially "how do I stop criminals from being criminals?" This is tautologically impossible.

The only way to resolve your problem is going to be to make it an "honor among thieves" thing that guns are never to be used. You could make it so that guns are not impossible to get a hold of for a criminal, but that it is generally frowned upon to do so.

Make it so the use of a gun is considered cowardly, and thus your character won't gain the respect he needs rise to the top. It could be an unspoken rule among all the gangs that any ranged weapon is considered cowardly, and disputes are to be solved "face to face in the ring," so to speak. Any member of a gang using a gun promptly loses the protection of his peers, lest all other gangs unite against his gang to neutralize the threat of a gun user in their midst.

As an aside, saying guns will be "too violent" but baseball bats and knives won't is not a plausible scenario. A weapon is only as deadly as the person using it. A baseball bat is quite deadly, and a knife can be more deadly than a gun in a close up melee fight. Just for an example, you can grab a gun, you can't grab a knife, and knives often make worse wounds than bullets.

There are also plenty of ways to be plenty violent without using a gun. Recent events show a can of gasoline and a lighter can be plenty violent, and so can a car. The chemistry of many nerve agents is also quite simple.

So you have to limit the ruthlessness of the gang in the first place to avoid all of these scenarios being used. The only way to do that is to make it less of a "gang" and more of a "tribe" with laws and customs.

This has the added benefit of keeping the government off your back. In this case, the government is willing to turn a blind eye to most of your gang activities since your gangs aren't a threat to their monopoly on guns. So long as no member of a gang uses a gun, the gang itself enjoys less scrutiny from the government and can avoid a crackdown.

Honor only gets you so far

If gangs have an honor-code about using not using guns, that will last as long as it takes for someone to 'cheat', eliminate their competition and gain a lot of standing/power/influence. Honor based systems only really work in small one-on-one conflicts where there is social standing to be gained. In larger conflicts where social standing isn't a concern, the most effective weapon for eliminating your enemy will be used, namely guns.

This assumes an environment where guns are common and easily accessible. If guns are made sufficiently scarce then gangs will have no choice but to fall back to non-firearm weapons. However, I don't think you can force a group to forgo ranged weapons entirely. Crossbows and bows provide that much needed damage-at-a-distance capability. Aggressive policing to reduce the number of overall guns in society would help a lot. (This assumes that your country doesn't have a super strong gun culture like the one found in the USA.)

If guns are sufficiently scarce then home workshops to create guns would pop up to meet demand. Any gang member should have a strong preference for damage-at-range since distance from the enemy decreases the change of getting hurt. Any gang that can make guns will have an advantage over those that don't. However, the equipment to work metal is heavy and difficult to move. Finding gun underground gun manufacturers should be easier than finding individual guns. 3D printing of guns is even harder to track down. Good luck with that one.

I'm going to suggest that you don't need the gang not to have guns, you need them to not use them. To that end:

It's a gang, gangs have traditions and codes of behaviour like any organisation; more so than many other modern organisations in fact. The gang chooses to settle its internal disputes with feats and competitions of strength and skill, guns don't fit in well with that tradition. Minor disagreements are settled in the ring, with or without gloves, serious infractions will be dealt to with bats and personal disagreements involving direct insults that cannot be forgiven will result in the knives quite literally coming out. The gang has guns but only for combating outsiders that aren't seen as having the same honour. They only use them on members as a statement when someone has done something truly unforgivable and they want to show them to be outside the honour of the gang family.

Set your society as in a slightly dystopian future, one that emphasizes certain negative aspects of the USA's culture. In US pop culture, homicides committed against the poor are often take the back burner compared to middle class/upper class homicides (there is only so much budget, wall of silence, its just a bunch of bad guys killing each other, etc...). Exaggerate this problem, make your police ignore crimes, including murder: as long as it happens in the slums, and obeys certain unspoken rules.

Make one of these unspoken rules be no guns. (As guns have a tendency to travel far when they miss, in densely populated areas this can be very dangerous). Have the police crack down with iron boots whenever a gun is used. Stamping all of the gangs in the area (an any innocent bystanders) into a bloody pulp.

This will make the gangs self police the use of guns. As any gang that uses guns will bring the hammer of justice down (hard) on everyone. Which makes using a gun a stupid idea, because your fellow gang members will be first in line to slit your throat and present your body to the local station with roses and an apology, so that the break of the code is ignored. You can add in references to the purge that happened in '29 or some other fictitious event, that explains why your criminals don't use guns.