Perhaps you don't like plinking, but that doesn't mean everyone should not. I've been shooting with air guns since I was very young, and I know that I've shot over 20 K pellets over the time. I've often upgraded my airgun to the newer model, or with better features. Last year, I wanted to get myself a nice PCP. I then went to a weekend of training for the firearms profession. I had to apply for a possession and acquisition permit, wait a while, had administrative issues, but then at some point I finally received it. Then I started the work to try and get the PCP. Suffice to say that I had to contact multiple company, make tons of calls to the governement, had to arrange for modifications so that it would be legal to own here, and finally I learned that I woudl also, after all this, have to send the gun back to the governement for analysis, and that beside the more than 2K$ it would cost it would take a few more months again before I'd receive it.
So I started wondering how much more noise (DBs) and money would it cost to shoot a 22LR using a load equivalent in power to the gun I was acquiring. I did the calculations, and I would have to shoot 42 000 rounds through the .22LR I was looking at before it would have cost me the same amount as shooting 42 000 rounds through the PCP for which I would be pumping all the shots.. (not including any maintenance, which would also be higher on the pcp case). Any less and the 22 was costing less, so that's the choice I made at that point. Went to the dealer, purchased it, and I'm done!
This all come down to new regulations being applied on simple gear making it way out of price for a lot of people. Spending countless hours trying to acquire it is also a waste of time I'd have liked to spend shooting or doing something else I like rather than battling through legislation. The good thing is that the company I had contacted for the importation had other requests for the same gun and they finally invested themself to make it legal to import here.