the gun control timescale in Britain is basically a 200 year history:
1800: Merrie England is at play. If you can afford a firearm then congratulations it’s yours.
1820: The Westphalian Peace breaks down as Britain has won its first industrial age war and realises that there are a lot of poor and/or crazed Boneyonic War veterans running around and someone should start to pay attention
1870: Britain realises it can extort money out of people by making them buy loicences but does not yet seriously restrict their issue
1900: Introduction of ineffective but annoying paperwork restrictions
1920: The Congress of Vienna peace broke down and there was another, bigger, industrialler war: Now With Class Militancy. The paperwork moves from being annoying to being restrictive as you now had to keep the police sweet
1940: One could no longer apply for permission to own a rifle for self-defence (Krauts. Japs etc. notwithstanding. different jurisdiction entirely there)
1970: Shotguns entered the “keep the police sweet” zone. It is forbidden by law for criminals to possess firearms illegally.
At this point the convenient lunatics start going on shooting sprees about once a decade and the law gets more and more restrictive after each one until
2001: The security state which has obviously been building over the past century finally puts out some huge fruiting bodies and shoots Freedom Spores everywhere. This is barely noticeable in this timeline however because at this point the Police, the Freemasons and Parliament are starting to run out of firearms to ban. but the legislative tempo established in the 80s continues
2012: Special permission is granted for the discharging of firearms by competitors in the Olympic Games. Special permission is not granted for Team Great Britain to train at discharging firearms
Current year (2020): hahahahahahaha uh maybe we could require airsoft licences. would you like that? for your health!
fun game is to place where your jurisdiction is on this timeline
…
just been informed that it became necessary in 2017 under Scots law to get a licence for an air gun, possession without an offense subject to up to 2 years of imprisonment