Yet another example that
gun control tend to exist only in countries that are not
democratic.
Gun control, along with other infringement of
rights such as
censorship, are signs of a
totalitarian governments, and that the
leadership are uncertain of themselves in
power.
Total gun control was implemented in China immediately after the communists took power in 1949. Not many people had guns back then, but there was a civil war taking place, so the percentage of peasants and urbanites with guns in 1949 was significantly higher than before, when the Kuomintang was in power.
That was a bad sign because the CCP was still spouting heated rhetoric about violent revolution, and the like. It was obvious that the new masters of China was not going to tolerate any dissent, there were immediately purges sweeping through the countryside. Many were innocent. Newly disarmed, the people were helpless before the lynch mobs.
Notice that China managed to keep crime relatively low with a draconian system of law. The death penalty was used quite liberally.
Only the army had guns, hence it immediately became a political tool. The Cultural Revolution was taken place only Mao purged the army officials and replaced them with his own cronies. Note that Lin Biao, the Commander of the PLA, who was formerly a pawn of Mao, was murdered by Mao when he began to dissent with him over the excesses of Mao's policy. The persecuted could not fight back, with no way to defend themselves. People would just walk into their houses, steal their posessions, and beat them up. If there was no gun control, the Cultural Revolution would have been much harder to pull of, perhaps even impossible.
Guns are still completely illegal in China, because the government is totalitarian. People still kill each other all the same, just not with guns. Instead, they use machetes and knives. Dead is dead. Remember Tiananmen Square? It wouldn't have been a bloodbath if the workers were armed. If the student radicals were armed, they might well have provoked a fight and forced the army to act, but we will never know now.
Note that many violent crimes, such as robberies, are still committed by criminals armed with guns. They are illegally imported or stolen from armories.