Interesting WP article linked by Mill Creek. Would the controls work in the US? Probably, eventually. Would it be tolerated? Probably not. All you have to do is look at other countries and when you accept incremental gun controls, you can see what it leads to. But the fact that the laws were indeed passed and implemented in England truly suggests that Brit's are subjects and not the same as citizens in the USA.
My impression is that British hunting is primarily limited to people of financial means. The same generally applies to trout fishing. It goes back to royalty and their fox hunts. Here in the US, hunting is universal among the various socialogic groups, but certainly concentrated in rural areas and folks that live in rural area. They generally have access to hunting that city folks don't have without paying for the access. This is one of the reasons the Pennsylvania State Game Lands program was and is so successful as it provided universal access to hunting on public lands that were scattered around the state. In my state, there are a fair number of WMA's, but most are restricted in terms of the weapon that is allowable within the WMA to be used for hunting. That makes sense in the smaller WMAs as long as game management is successful.
From my perspective, it's sad what has happened in Great Britian from an individual right perspective. During WWII, we were shipping guns to arm their citizens as they had few weapons. The Brits have never really developed the gun culture that the US has and our culture dates back to when a minority of people from the Colonies rebelled against their British masters.
