[TZubiri]

There's even arguments for doing this even for cases where the actual state entity did something.

"The US did X" The president? The senate? A federal, or municipal body? etc..

But there's arguments against, if "The US bans automatic rifles" then to some extent it's clear what part of the US did it, to some other extent, it doesn't matter, and to some other extent, the part of the country that did the thing represents the whole country by corporization or democritazation.

In History it's very common to say Country did thing, "Germany invaded Poland", "Argentina signed the Roca-Runceman pact" and so on... Possibly because (in addition to the reasons stated above) information needs to be compressed more for the past, we have less space and priority for details of the past than we do for the present, a kind of cold-hot storage mechanism