I agree in principle, and the fee in itself isn’t expensive. It’s the fact that you need to buy a safe with a high enough security rating (which they actually do come to check on randomly) and then also another secure place to store ammo in. Legally they have to be separated when not in use.

After that you need an active membership in either a hunting party or a gun sports club, and participate/shoot a certain amount each year to keep the license for your gun. You also have to file and get approved for each individual gun you buy/own.

With all that said though, once you’ve gotten your first license and proved you can handle whatever firearm you got for either purpose it gets easier to get a second one, and then a third, as long as you have a valid enough reason to buy and own whatever gun you’re after.

Most people just start with a .22 and go up from there if it is for sports, or buy a shotgun or rifle for hunting.

As for self defense - it’s practically impossible to get a handgun for self protection purposes in any legal way, unless there are very special circumstances. Owning a gun for self protection is just not a thing people take seriously here, outside certain …groups.

As a sidenote tho, if you know where to look it’s not particularly hard to get a handgun if you want one, you just don’t want to get caught with one, and it’s also not completely trivial to get decent ammo. A black market Glock goes for around 500€ afaik.

Like I said, I agree with you in principle, but like I also mentioned, Finland is very conservative with certain things. This is one of them. I haven’t been shooting for a long time due to medical reasons, so some of this might be out of date. Maybe someone more involved please correct me if I got something wrong.