... In the Netherlands, it's basically impossible to own and shoot firearms. Thousands of dollars and years of training and club participation, just to shoot a club gun only at sanctioned events. If you want to own your rifle, you better be ready to pay dearly in $ and privacy.
Well, it IS possible to own and shoot guns in the Netherlands! But it takes time and perseverance .... Target shooting: you have to be a member in good standing for a year, and shoot with the club’s rifles and pistols. If you have followed lessons about firearms, and the club officials think you are safe with guns, they give you a recommendation for the police, and then you can buy one firearm, usually in .22 cal. You must keep a ‘passport’ where all shooting sessions are noted, and you have to attend a minimum of sessions each year. It becomes quite time-consuming, when after a couple of years you have the maximum number of firearms allowed: five that you have to shoot a certain number of times!
Since I quit shooting some 30 years ago, rules might have changed, but this is about target shooting. Collecting modern firearms is another story, even more restricted, but not impossible. Pre-1870 arms are free, but you are not allowed to shoot them unless you are a member of a shooting club.
In short: you have to be a member of the very select club of modern firearms owners “Edouard de Beaumont”, and before that, you have to pass all kinds of exams. It helped that I was one of the founding members, and my collection included some 60 rifles, carbines and light machine guns, made especially for the Dutch army or made in the Netherlands between 1800 and 1964. They were all shooters, even the 1800 Jagerbus (Jäger) and on the other end the 1964 AR10 full automatic rifle made at the ‘Artillerie Inrichtingen “ (arsenal) at Zaandam.
Some 20 years ago I realized the my collection had become a burden, due to even stricter rules concerning storage, alarm systems and the like, and since the collection of systems was complete and nothing remained to desire, I gradually transferred ownership of the collection to other members including Mr. Henk Visser who owned an incredible collection himself, and the National Military Museum.
Finally, muzzle loaders are free, provided they are pre-1945, which makes it for instance impossible to built a Jim Kibler kit. I myself was fortunate enough to have original parts allowing me to ‘reconstruct’ two rifles: a Jäger and a Lancaster county rifle, using Turkish Ottoman damast barrels I picked up in Yemen, an old Dutch flintlock made by Korte of Amsterdam 1815 and an original Eglish flintlock. This caused much head scratching by the police: “was this firearms-manufacturing or restoring old, pre-1870 firearms?” I must admit: knowledge of arms in general, and of flintlocks in particular is not a strong point with our police...
