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Regulation of firearms in modern times in the UK began with the Gun License Act of 1870, which was essentially a simple excise tax. This law required a person who wished to carry a firearm "outside the curtilage of his dwelling house" to purchase a license from the Post Office. Licenses were valid for one year.

In 1903, Parliament enacted the Pistols Act, which required a person to have a valid Gun License to acquire a firearm with a barrel less than 9 inches in length.

During the Great War, severe controls were enacted under the Defence of the Realm Act, essentially restricting sales to those going overseas.

After the war, the Government fearing a civil revolt as in Russia or as had happened in Ireland, commissioned a report that recommended a severe system of licensing for firearms.

This led to the Firearms Act 1920 which required a firearm certificate from the local police for the purchase and possession of rifles and pistols of all types. The law was badly drafted, and was amended several times to include shotguns with barrels less than 20 inches in length and to ban machineguns. These Acts were consolidated into the Firearms Act 1937.

After WW2, on the recommendation of the Home Secretary, the police gradually stopped the practice of issuing certificates for personal protection, eventually stopping altogether in 1954. However, many people still possessed shotguns for this purpose which only required a license under the 1870 Act.

In 1962, the law was tightened to impose stiffer sentences for firearms offences and to impose tighter age limits on acquisition.

After the abolition of the death sentence, the Firearms Act 1965 was enacted which increased the minimum legal length of shotgun barrels without a certificate to 24 inches. This law also created more offences and tightened sentences.

Although the Government in 1966 had rejected calls for licensing of shotguns, the murder of three police officers with pistols led to the introduction of shotgun certification in the Criminal Justice Act 1967. The Firearms Acts 1937 - 1967 were consolidated in the Firearms Act 1968, the principal law still in effect today.

Calls for the tightening of the law were rejected in 1973, however, punitive increases in licensing fees became the norm as did tighter and tighter interpretations of the law by the police.

In 1981, a man fired a starting pistol near the Queen during the Trooping of the Colours. This led to the Firearms Act 1982, which classifies imitation firearms which can be readily converted into working firearms as firearms.

In 1987, a man named Michael Ryan committed mass murder in Hungerford using a 9mm pistol and two semi-automatic rifles. This led to the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1988, which prohibited all centrefire semi-automatic and pump-action rifles and carbines, military weapons such as rocket launchers and semi-automatic and pump-action shotguns with short barrels or a short overall length.

In addition, the law made substantial changes to the licensing regime for shotguns, requiring them to be registered on certificates in a similar way to firearms held on firearm certificates, requiring them also to be kept locked up as with other firearms, and restricting pump-action and semi-auto shotguns to a maximum magazine capacity of two rounds, unless they were held with a firearm certificate. Another change was that "downconverted" firearms reverted to their original classification (such as rifles which had been converted into shotguns by lengthening and smoothboring the barrel).

Following an incident at a gun club in 1990 when a temporary member shot dead the range officer and stole a pistol which he used in further crimes, the Home Office stiffened regulations made under the 1988 Act which required gun clubs to limits their guest days to only four per year; in addition, a probationary period of at least six months was introduced before a gun club member could apply for an FAC. These regulations were relaxed in 1995 to allow one guest day per month and a three month probationary period.

In 1992, the European Firearms Directive imposed certain legal restrictions on firearms possession in the EU, and this led to the Firearms Acts (Amendment) Regulations 1992, which prohibited expanding pistol ammunition, as well as armour-piercing, incediary and other military munitions, grenade launchers and firearms disguised as other objects. These regulations also instituted a passport system for firearms, called the European Firearms Pass. In addition, the acquisition of Category B firearms (handguns, semi-auto long guns) had to be authorised by both the State where the firearm was acquired and the State where the person acquiring the firearm resided. This is called an Article 7 authority.

Also in 1992, the validity of certificates was extended from three years to five years by the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1992.

In 1994, the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1994 increased penalties for firearms offences and created new offences for threatening people with firearms.

In 1996, Thomas Hamilton walked into Dunblane Primary School armed with two 9mm pistols and two .357 revolvers. He shot dead 16 children, injured 15, killed their teacher and himself. This atrocity led to another knee-jerk law, the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1997. This law banned handguns, other than .22s kept at licensed clubs, air pistols and muzzle-loading guns, and also expanded the ban on expanding ammunition to include rifle ammunition. The law also banned the delivery of firearms by mail to certificate holders, and made various changes to the reporting requirements for transactions in firearms.

The Labour Party came to power in May of 1997, and enacted the Firearms (Amendment)(No. 2) Act 1997, which repealed the exemption for .22s kept at pistol clubs, effectively banning all modern cartridge handguns in Great Britain with limited exemptions for collectors and other limited uses.

Despite the bans, armed crime continued to rise after these laws were enacted, and concern about increasing levels of armed crime, especially after the murder of two teenage girls who were machine-gunned to death led to the Criminal Justice Act 2003, which introduced a mandatory five-year minimum sentence for possession of a prohibited firearm upon indictment; and the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003, which raised the minimum age limit for possession of an airgun from 14 to 17 years; prohibited airguns that use self-enclosed air cartridges (such as those made by Brocock); and also expanded the requirement to have "lawful authority or reasonable excuse" to cover possessing an imitation firearm or an unloaded air weapon in a public place. In addition, section 287 et seq. of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 requires prosecutions for possession of prohibited firearms to be made only be indictment and introduces a mandatory minimum five-year sentence for possession of most types of prohibited firearms.