“One more upbeat note may be - generally all sorts of proposals are made by government departments (or the civil servants that run them)”
civil servants who must keep coming up with new ideas how ever stupid so they can justify their jobs.
“However, I can readily see good reason being required”
And how would that improve public safety? given how easy it would be to fulfil the criteria, unless they make clay grounds like Section 1 clubs, require Home office approval. Then conditions like on a FAC for live quarry shooting.
The current system is not broken, if the Police did the job properly Plymouth would not have happened, yet we could yet be further victims due to the Police failings.