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I've asked this question a few times before and never gotten an answer approaching the thing I was asking about- are there any European gun owners on the motte, and if so, what's your experience dealing with the bureaucracy surrounding it?
Now, to be clear, what I am not asking is 'I live in x European country and here's a summary of the relevant laws from wikipedia, no I don't own guns and don't intend to, and nobody around me does or wants to either, but here's my opinion on these things'. What I'm asking is the experience of dealing with bureaucrats around this issue. Do they take for granted that gun ownership ought to be strongly discouraged and treat you with hostility, as blue states in the US are reputed to? Do they basically assume that if you're applying for a license you have a legitimate reason and are box-checking to make sure you aren't a criminal? Something in between? When I asked this when we were still on reddit I got an interesting comment about the politics of the situation in France, does someone have a commentary about actually going through the process and how government officials treat you? Is fingerprinting done through sympathetic government contractors as Texas CHL licenses use? If you had interview and character reference requirements what was that like? Is the license application processed faster or slower than the normal speed of bureaucracy in your country(Texas approves CHL licenses faster but actually prints them slower compared to most licenses with actual requirements).
I think broadly this? Depending on demographics? The people I know who have guns are upper-class, semi-rural people of the huntin' shootin' and fishin' variety, who are culturally expected to own guns and be responsible with them, and none of them ever complained of any difficulty with bureaucracy.
What country?
UK. I asked in a bit more detail and the matter is broadly evaluated on a spectrum from enthusiast devices (antiques, breech-loading shotguns) on one end to personal security devices (automatic pistols) on the other end:
Getting antique weapons from > 150 years ago requires no application, nothing.
Getting a breech-loading shotgun for pheasant or equivalent - easy if you're the right kind of person (rural farmer, country squire) and have no criminal record. You might be asked for a reference. These guys quite often make their own ammunition and there's no problem with that AFAIK. If you live in the city you may get probing questions about when and how you plan to use this thing.
If it's a rifle you will have to do a lot more work to make the inspectors happy but if you look like a plausible deerstalker you can do it without too much issue. My school had these for training cadets, but we had to count bullets in and out and account for all shells fired.
My friend knows one person who was allowed to have an automatic pistol. He was a banking family scion who could plausibly argue that he was under serious security risk, and he needed vast amounts of paperwork, checks with the local police, regular medical and psych evaluations, and even then he had to lock up both the pistol and the ammo separately and so it was almost useless to him. He just did it for fun.
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