The disposal of old guns in the UK has always been part and parcel of the shooting scene though from the 1950s onwards it has gained pace, Klapper has come up with a number but in reality it is far more convoluted than that. These are the reasons for the way things are going here in Brit Land.
Firearm use and ownership it is no secret that British Governments since the 1940s have had a policy to restrict public gun ownership using various forms of restrictions from how firearms are stored. restricted numbers of ownership. Licencing requirements on a personal level with the bar being lifted higher each year and of course cost for the processing and now Doctors costs for their piece pf paper. These ongoing costs on top of the consumables needed is starting to make the average family man to take up Golf rather than jump through the compliance hoops.
The British Proof Laws also play a large part in the gun scrappage system, just an example take the ubiquitous 12 Bore once the barrel bore dimension reaches .740 it is out of proof it can only go two ways from here though in only one direction to a registered firearms dealer because it is now illegal to trade or sell the gun and what a dealer will give you for the gun is peanuts BUT you can still use it though for all intents and purposes it is valueless.
The gun retail trade have just one compunction "to sell guns" in any way they can. Put simply it is far better to make 20% from a £1000 pound sale than 20% £150 pound repair bill the incentive is obvious. If a person comes to them with an older gun that does require a repair, here are just a couple of sales tactics Oh! the repair will be expensive Oh! even if the gun is repaired its reliability will always be suspect. Oh!!! The oldest one of them all Damascus barrels are always suspect, can be dangerous even if they look good!!!! And it has Hammers! This new gun will give you many years of reliable service with the salesman's fingers crossed behind his back, just any thing to sell you a gun and scrap the one you have being offered a pittance for.
I kid you not!!! This gun was scrap and as a young man I purchased it as scrap because it was old a bit rusty stock had seen better days and sharp intake of breath it has Damascus barrels but lets not mention to the person who owned it the barrels where Nitro Proof and in Proof.


[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]

Not a bad purchase looking back for a scrapper though I did have to spend money on it to get it to this state though it was basically a sound usable gun when I purchased it, how many other fine guns of this type where never rescued and just lost in the name of profit.

Selling De Activated guns is not a new thing here in Brit Land until all the restrictions started to creep in an old shotgun could have the firing pins welded solid and a welded plugs fitted in to the barrel or barrels and that was fine for a wall hanger but now you have a lot of hoops to jump through and paperwork to go through at a cost, so having your favoured gun deactivated for you to keep not requiring a licence is difficult and expensive.
To sum things between the government type of shot restrictions and the gun trade itself there is not much hope for gun ownership in this country sadly.

The only lessons in my life I truly did learn from where the ones I paid for!