I guess you never lived in Gwent (that's a part of Wales for those not familiar with UK geography) like several of my mates did? One of them had a .458 Win Mag as he liked to go to Africa every other year. Had hell on convincing the local Firearms Officer he should be allowed to buy it. That pompous little git eventually allowed him a variation to purchase it but absolutely refused to let him have authority to purchase or possess ammo for it. This turd said if my mate wanted to use it to kill things in Africa, he could buy ammo for it in Africa as no animals in the UK required a rifle with that amount of power to kill 'em. Yeah, really! He eventually ended up suing the police to allow him to buy ammo and he won when the judge agreed the cops were acting like idiots.

Greater Manchester Police were nearly as bad as I had friends there too. Gave my brother a car, Ford Sierra hatchback. He ends up trading to some rip off car sales place on the outskirts of Manchester. They call GMP when they find 9mm cases under the carpet in the trunk area. (This was about a year after the handgun ban in the UK) GMP wanted my local cops to send the Armed Response Team to my house and lock me up until they could come over to interview me. Sensibly, my local copper called me first. We established the 9mm cases had ended up there when I was shooting my Browning HP service pistol on the military range in preparation for Army pistol competition and I was using the car as a case catcher.

I can give you chapter and verse on the abuses wrought on law abiding folks by out of control Firearms Departments at various police forces in the UK. The "big deal" is that the Firearms Acts do NOT allow the cops to make up the LAW to suit themselves when it comes to enacting the provisions of the Acts but many do, time and time again. I have had to fight to own more than one rifle in the same caliber; fight to be allowed to buy more ammo than they thought I should be; fight to get the stupid restrictions they put on rifles removed and many other instances of inane behavior. My .22 Hornet rifle had a restriction of "only to be used for the destruction of hares and foxes on the XYZ Farm." Ergo, if I shot a rabbit with it or wanted to shoot hares on ABC Farm, I was technically in violation of the restrictions on my certificate for which the penalty could have been revocation and forfeiture of my guns.

You were lucky with Sussex Police; many others in the UK weren't and aren't so please educate yourself before you mislead a bunch of people into thinking that 'reasonable restrictions' can be easily complied with. The problem with reasonable restrictions is whose definition of reasonable are we going to use? Yours or Diane Feinstein's???