Thanks. That was a more direct answer to my question. Is it common for UK people to know someone who has farmland and gives casual shooting permissions? I live in an area with a ton of farmland (NJ is actually called The Garden State) and firearm discharging is pretty tightly restricted, outside of highly regulated hunting seasons. The idea of blasting away on private property would bring Mr Policeman there right quick. There might be three places within a 80 mile radius where you can shoot skeet, and those are tightly regulated too.
{ETA: there are four, and in an 80 mile +/- diameter, not radius. Three are regulated county ranges, and one is a crazy large parcel that fits discharging range regulations. The reason we can only hunt with shotguns is that my State is densely populated any pretty flat, and rifle rounds easily travel to populated areas}
Vermin control is a common reason to possess a firearm, so I suspect it is not difficult to find somewhere to shoot. In most instances, the local police officer would get a phone call to let them know about any shooting near houses. Lamping for foxes is common.
No, the reason I was confused is that saying "I just want to collect some guns" was a criteria I hadn't heard before, and it seems to render the rest of the reasons pointless.
I suspect there is not the interest in guns, to make collecting common place.
As Darat said, most Americans don't own guns, nor are we "obsessed"with them. The long guns I had were for hunting and occasional plinking. Please don't think most Americans are obsessed because of a loud and obnoxious minority. We don't like them either.
I lived and worked in Boston for a summer as a security guard in 1986 and then stayed with relatives in Connecticut and spend 3 weeks in NY. I was present four times when firearms were drawn or discharged, once on Boston Common as drug dealers were arrested, twice at work and once waiting in a cinema queue in NY. I was not allowed to leave my relatives house to walk to the shops due to twitchy neighbours after some armed home invasions. They had a handgun and shot gun in the house.
Wait, you just described how trivially easy it was, now you are back to saying he would be barred from ownership. Why couldn't he simply say that he wants to start collecting guns? Even one or two is a collection, or the start of one anyway.
A gun has to count as being collectable. It is not allowed to amass an armoury and call it a collection. A collection can be one gun, as in the case of the luger from a surrendered senior Nazi, to around 150 guns, that included one reputedly used at the Battle of Little Big Horn. Collections tend to be historic, or particularly high value collectable guns, such as the famous Purdey shotguns and one had some amazingly carved Spanish shotguns, like people collect Rolex watches, not £30 digital made in China.
I'm asking to get a sense of the practical, real answer, not the canned answer or technically accurate answer. For instance, if the applicant has permission to shoot on a given property, and loses that permission for one reason or another, is his license then revoked? If our intrepid phone sanitizer says he plans to start a rural vermin killing side business, and he doesn't actually do so or gets no clients, does he get to keep his license and gun or are they conditional upon maintaining the initial terms?
If someone loses permission to shoot, they are expected to declare it, they are given time to find somewhere else and if they cannot, they are expected to surrender the gun. If they don't, it will be seized.
If the phone sanitizer gets no work, he is again expected to declare that and surrender. If it is found at renewal time he has not used the gun, it is seized.
The police keep a track of gun use by the amount of ammo purchased, possessed and used. People found to have hardly used their guns in the 5 years between grants/renewals, they are encouraged to surrender and can have their weapons seized.
