It's also a common right wing tactic. It's really just an authoritarian action in general, separate from left or right.

"Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary." -Karl Marx

This is coming from California, a distinctly capitalist state, and refers to a list published by the US Federal Department of Justice, which reports to a distinctly capitalist (or... at a minimum, a distinctly non-communist) administration.

It also doesn't get in the way of the US's (already extraordinarily loose) firearms sale and acquisition doctrine which regularly costs innocent lives with the pretext of resisting a tyrannical government (which, it appears, people aren't actually that interested in doing now that one's in power).