I dunno about that. The cost of producing firearms is greater than the cost of producing bows and arrows, and I personally think that the skill involved in maintaining firearms is greater than what is required for bows too. So you have a group of untrained, undisciplined commoners, trying to work with technology that has a good chance of exploding in their face, up against, say, the army, which, while not consisting entirely of wizards, will still have enough to just rip through the peasants.

AoE magic will do a number on them, after all. It's literally a massacre, unless the peasants and the middle-class (and weirdly democratic adventurers) stupid enough to support them ALSO have their hands on powerful magical artifacts that may help them deal with the disadvantage of being composed largely of fodder.