So, why are guns necessary?

[Brenus]

“I make this the rankings in terms of how heavily armed their country's peoples were in 1917/18.” This is the rank of ARMIES, not people.

Because you can be sure that the Autocrat Tsar of all the Russia didn’t want his newly freed slaves be armed when they realised HE was the cause of THEIR sufferings. We speak of the Tsar who order the crowd that his Secret Police gathered in order for him to show how good and nice he was to shoot at the crowd coming to ask for bread.

Well tried.

[rvg]

Because you can be sure that the Autocrat Tsar of all the Russia didn’t want his newly freed slaves be armed when they realised HE was the cause of THEIR sufferings. We speak of the Tsar who order the crowd that his Secret Police gathered in order for him to show how good and nice he was to shoot at the crowd coming to ask for bread.

It wasn't really a matter of legal prohibition as much as an economic one: most people were too poor to afford, say, a hunting rifle.

To put it into perspective: the cheapest Berdan hunting rifle cost about 12 rubles.
You could buy a cow for 3-5 rubles.