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.
I maintain that you have completely misunderstood the meaning of this sentence. I still don't understand where in it you got the idea that there is an implicit, "And therefore they should have, by force" tacked on to the end.
When someone says "they had the capability to put a gun in every civilian's hand," it's pretty reasonable to assume they're talking about putting a gun in every civilian's hand.
Even if the context is that they're responding to someone who said, "There weren't enough guns to arm everyone who wanted one"
Gonna have to agree to disagree on this one, I guess.