Keep it up!
Anyway let me tell you few positive anecdotes that came up with recent gun law changes in my country.
Old gun law was passed in 2012.
New gun law was passed in 2018.
As per EU legal practice, every bill has to be made public before sending to parliament for debate.
There is govt web site, where any interested individual or organization can make the comments and proposals for changes.
As per gun law 2012, for example, all rifles that "resemble assault rifles", where banned. This means Benelli R1 can be registered, ar 15 cannot. SKS or Dragunov could be registered, but ak47 could not.
Of course there was no definition of what is "assaault rifle".
There was also requirement for 5 year medical check in the law as of 2012.
Then came the bill of the gun law in 2018:
From IPSC and dynamic shooting community was growing pressure to allow ar15 (and ak47) semi autos to be legalized. From everybody from shooting community there was growing pressure for medical check to be relaxed, especially from hunting community as hunters in average are older generation.
(How long to make new medical check frequency? 10years? 25 years?)
On the end it turned like this:
Semi autos passed fairly painless, the clause "resemble assault rifle" was removed.
Medical requirement was somewhat more challenging debate.
So, the ministry of interior (ministry of police, providing first draft of law) suggested medical check to be valid till the age of 65, and then renewed every 5 years.
We, in the shooting community were thrilled! Yes, age 65! Fantastic! It sounds like for ever!
But unexpectedly the representatives of the party of pensioners, which have few reps in parliament, kicked in in the debate, and said:
This is unacceptable!
With this requirement, you are legalizing de facto and de iure, discrimination of elderly citizens!
The comment has been recognized, and medical check requirement was defined "until health condition changes".
This means a person makes first medical check before buying first gun, and medical fitness report is valid till he gets seriously ill.
There is obligation to define your family doctor when applying for gun license
The health condition requirements are subject of different legal act (not the gun law). Defining 18+ different diagnosis. Old legal act since early 2000's.
But the "Change of health status" clause started the temporary gun grab.
So, only professional medicine doctor can decide if someone is fit to have gun or not.
This is not decision of family doctor.
Professional medicine doctors give fitness report for all professions (police, welders, divers, construction workers, pilots, astronauts, teachers, etc and so also for gun owners),.
But, probably due to some internal communication in ministry of health, family doctors who control health on entire population (and who are not specialist in professional medicine) were instructed to inform police when individual health condition changes.
This resulted that in some provinces when somebody catched the flu or scratched the toe, next day police would come and confiscate the guns, after being reported by his family doctor for change in health condition.
That persons was then send to non-routine medical check (in proffesional medicine office) to prove if he is fit to own the gun, or not.
In first 5-6 months there was a havoc of temporary gun grab in several provinces, with hundreds medical based gun confiscation made.
Newspapers reported official number of temporary gun confiscations, I calculated that by that time the total amount of non routine medical checks went as high as 200.000 EUR (based on average price of medical fitness check), not small money in local communities.
But in law 2018, there was "catch 22", which family doctors, somehow omitted. (Ups!)
This stopped gun grab within 3 months!
Who pays the medical fitness check bills?
So, it defined that if a person who had his guns confiscated is later proven fit to own the gun on non routine medical check, his guns will be returned, and medical expenses for this medical check will be refunded back by government (actually from the budget of ministry of interior - police).
If person is proven unfit, expenses are on him, guns remain in police custody, and he has 6 months to sell the guns, give them to govt without compensation, or keep the guns disabled by authorized gunsmith.
So, what happened next, 95% of first medical based confiscations were proven wrong, 95% of gun owners got positive medical fitness reports, and guns were given back to rightful owner.
Then - refund bills started pouring in, (thousands of euros), and suddenly the medical gun grab just stopped.
What a surprise!
What I suppose that happened is, there should had been some correspondence and exchange between two ministries (Ministry of health and ministry of interior), and family doctors were instructed and educated to be very very cautions not to report wrong diagnosis for individual.
Now is peace and quiet on medical front.
No more gun grabs.
The situation lasted maybe for 6 months after implementation of new law as of Novemebr 2018. Ended by spring of 2019. With happy ending.
And semi autos ar15s and ak47, are routinely registered (non related to medical issues, just more lax gun laws)
People are buying them for sport shooting and hunting.
Now, from shooting and hunting community there is more pressure to relax the gun laws more.
Silencers/suppressors are still illegal, but there is growing pressure to legalize them as well.... Public sentiment on this is positive.
Local politicians and opposition parties call on occasion for more relaxation of gun laws, with latest immigration crises, so we will see how it goes.
EU commission, is quiet about this matter - before (aftermath of paris attacks) it was very loud to ban guns and semi autos. Now EC is quiet.
Lead ammunition in EU is still under close scrutiny, still subject to debate.
Will see how it goes..