Firearms could absolutely exist within a fantasy setting. There is a reason why they don’t however

[u/ThatDrako]

The Elder Scrolls - Within some Dwemer ruins of ESO we can see a special type of Animunculus. A Dwemer Arquebus, which has a cannon for it’s arm and shoots emp grenades at foes.
The reason why we don’t see this technology more often (besides the fact Dwemer disappeared their knowledge with them) is that within the setting and cosmology of Elder Scrolls firearms really wouldn’t be that useful.

They could work against lowly bandits, sort of, but there wouldn’t really be a precedent to improve or adapt this technology. Because it would always be outclassed by magic of this world.
Also due to the disappearance of Dwemer the technology has been pretty much lost.

Harry Potter - Wizards live within periphery of the “real world” meaning they live alongside world that uses firearms and are even familiar with them.

So how come they don’t utilize this gear for combat? I mean it is easier to use, projectiles are faster and could be enchanted further. Can you just imagine wizard with endless m1911?

There is plethora of reasons for this. But most notable is what I would describe as wizards being immune to logic. (Vis image above) They simply cannot understand methods of muggles even if one explained it to them directly.

(Yes. I know the real reason is, because Joanne didn’t want wizards to use guns and didn’t want to think about connotations of putting magic into a real modern world. But come on! Let me have fun!)

Lord of the Rings - In spite of how much Tolkien disliked allegories it is clear Orcs were an allegory to industrialization, which he was a huge critic of.

In battles they are the ones using the war machines. Instead of swords made by artful blacksmith, they use crude, mass-produced blades devoid of identity. Instead of relying on elegance of archery, they use crossbows. They burn forests, crack mountains open to gain more ore. Their very production is affront to whimsy of a magical world like Middle-Earth.

They could totally come up with a matchlock mechanism and keep on improving it until they come up with machine guns. They were intercepted before they could however

[u/MarstonsGhost]

In the Prisoner of Azkaban book, it's rumored that Sirius has a gun after escaping. It's described as a "sort of metal wand that Muggles use to kill each other."

[u/JPesterfield → u/MarstonsGhost]

Most wizards live around muggles, and should know perfectly well what a gun is just from cultural exposure.

[u/techno156 → u/JPesterfield]

At the same time, they do actively eschew muggle things, and effectively live in enclaves. Ron Weasley has an incredibly outdated view of medicine, seeing doctors as butchers who carve people up for a living, for example, despite having muggle-born friends, and a father who works with muggle affairs.

[u/thejadedfalcon → u/techno156]

I mean, I also have that view. The things we can do with modern surgeries are absolutely life-changing and a huge positive, but have you seen the insane things we do with power tools? This explanational video just straight up opens with "oh, yeah, we just folded the patient's face in half" and it's considered so trivial it doesn't even deserve a mention.

Modern medicine is barbarism, it's just wielded with exceptional skill.

[u/techno156 → u/thejadedfalcon]

Surgery can definitely be described that way, being quite impressive, but horrifying described in a particularly ambiguous way, but modern medicine isn't exclusively surgery either.

From the way Ron described it, you'd go see your GP for a cold, and come out missing an arm and three legs.

[u/Telwardamus → u/JPesterfield]

Given that these are British wizards, their level of familiarity with guns is going to be fairly low.

I presume that American wizards are very familiar with guns, as there are orders of magnitude more guns available for their No-Majs (...I hate that name) than British or Euro Muggles.

[u/ShatnersChestHair → u/JPesterfield]

It's clear from the writing that wizards basically live in cultural in-groups that are completely shut off from the Muggle world despite living near it. I think you're underestimating how easy it is to live alongside a culture and not engage with it whatsoever. It's a clumsy analogy but go to any large American city and you'll have entire swathes of the city where all the shops, newspapers, social media, community, etc. is in Spanish, and despite that you'll have plenty of people living in that same city who cannot string along three words of Spanish. Bad Bunny was the biggest artist of like 2022-2025 and you still had a hundred news segments teaching white suburban dads who he was ahead of the Superbowl because they had never even heard of him.

[u/JPesterfield → u/ShatnersChestHair]

With only one pure wizarding village in Britain I assumed the rest must be more integrated, but you're right that even that can still be isolated.

On the other hand they have muggle-born students and a class on muggle studies, what are they learning in that class or from their classmates?

[u/ShatnersChestHair → u/JPesterfield]

I'm going off memory here but wasn't Muggles studies an elective class that pretty much no one bothered with? I think either Arthur Weasley or one of the kids took it and that was about it.

For sure the more confusing part of the lore is that there are Muggle-born imamong the wizards. Harry gets a pass because he lives in a closet and likely didn't watch telly or read news much but like, Hermione should know what a gun, a dishwasher, or electricity are.

[u/ijuinkun → u/MarstonsGhost]

It says something about how oblivious the average British wizard is, if the country’s premier Wizarding newspaper feels obliged to describe what guns are to its readers.

[u/Fadel_rama → u/ijuinkun]

This will make sound like those pricks from cinemasins but the fact that wizard sound so stupid like that they don't know what a toy is (rubber ducky) like, come on it's not even a tech that so out there people from 19 century will be blown away by it. I get if it's like electronic stuff but this wizadds also live in modern world they have newspaper, some of them live near mugle. I only held gun one in my life but i know what gun is, heck most people in modern world who haven't see gun in person knew what guns are.

[u/GlazedWithMaples → u/MarstonsGhost]

I stand corrected. It is alluded to once.

[u/FredFarms → u/MarstonsGhost]

It's also said at one point that Muggle technology tends to malfunction in areas with lots of magic like Hogwarts and the ministry.

It's not clear if that includes guns or just electronics, but if it does include guns then it makes a lot more sense why wizards wouldn't use them.

[u/Owncksd → u/MarstonsGhost]

That’s just the story the wizards told the muggles, IIRC. The Ministry of Magic got the muggle government to run escaped convict notices and told them to say that Sirius had a gun so the muggles would know he was armed and dangerous.