As far as I know, all of them - USSR, Cuba, China, Vietnam, NK etc, implement gun control. Why should their governments do that? The people of these states genuinely support(ed) socialism, if they are/were all armed they can protect socialism far better than the 1% of the population that makes up the military.
That was a nickname in Spanish ("barbudos"). They even had baseball uniforms made for a series of exhibition games: https://www.considerable.com/entertainment/retronaut/fidel-castro-baseball-photos/.