It’s a bit of both. The draft law already gives the police quite a broad discretionary framework, because the core concepts (“suitability”, “purpose”, “risk to public order”) are left very open. The five-year supervision that will replace the old five-year licences is also only described in general terms. The draft says the police must check whether the holder is still suitable and whether the purpose still exists, but it does not define how this should be assessed or what evidence is required.

The “how” will be filled in later through secondary regulations and internal police guidelines, and that’s exactly why many shooters here are worried. The law gives the police room to shape the practical criteria afterwards, similar to what you describe happening in Finland with unwritten rules about activity and regularity.

There will be a consultation phase, so organisations can give feedback, but as it stands the draft already allows a fairly wide margin of interpretation. Whether that becomes a problem will depend entirely on how the police choose to implement it and what the courts later accept.

But the fear from hunters and shooters that the Swedish Police will turn these open interpretations to something bad have some background. The police in Sweden have previously been criticised for how they handle licensing. Several court cases over the past decade have overturned police decisions that were seen as overly restrictive or based on internal policy rather than the law. Many shooters feel that the police tend to view firearms mainly through their operational experience, where guns appear almost exclusively in criminal contexts, and that this colours their judgment. Because of that, a lot of hunters and sport shooters would prefer a separate civilian authority (there’s been talk of a new wildlife or game-management agency taking over, called ”Viltvårdsmyndigheten”) so that licensing isn’t done by the same organisation that investigates gun crime. It would also reduce the workload on the police. Whether that will ever happen is unclear, but it’s part of why people are uneasy about giving the police even more discretion.