Thanks Bazoo, I've shot all my life, started competing at adult level in prone smallbore competitions when I was 11 and shot my first longrange fullbore match at 13 in the early '60s. It was a 900yd match, shot with my Dads .303 P14 Enfield. Everything in those days was sling and aperture sights.
Although you needed a permit for a firearm is was cheap and easy. Every single small town had at least one, but often several rifle clubs, nearly all geared to prone match shooting. All the town ranges were 25, 50 or 100yds and there were plenty of local 3-600 yd ranges and few 1,000 -1,200 yd ranges. A great majority of club shooters used BSA Martini's of some sort, from a fairly basic 12/15 to the more up-market 2/3/4/5 Internationals. During the '70 a few Walthers, Anschutz, Finnish Lion, Russian CM-2 appeared.
About that time I switched to pistol shooting, again a permit was needed but not difficult and no restrictions really on what you could have. Things really started to fall apart in 1987 (Hungerford) after a mass shooting (Very rare over here) With typical knee-jerk reaction, politicians needing to be seen to do something and the media working it's self into a frensy high capacity magazine pump and semi-auto shotguns and semi-auto rifles were banned.
Then in 1996 another mass shooting (Dunblane) just about sealed the fate of handguns, all banned except for muzzle loaders.
Rifles, on the whole are not a problem, again a permit is needed, and more hoops to jump through every time. I have a enough to cover me from rats in the barn to red deer and everything in between but it's becoming an uphill struggle, death by a hundred cuts.
It creeps up on you a bit at time, so slow you don't notice it. Tomorrow morning I'm off to a local club to shoot a 25yd offhand comp with my .357 Winchester 94AE.