Yes, it's trivial, but that's the point

We would note that we’re not averse to some form of licencing for muskets and the like. And yet:

Members of the UK’s leading Napoleonic re-enactment society have said post-Brexit customs rules fail to account for their firearms, leaving them at risk of having their weapons confiscated.

The Napoleonic Association is meant to be heading to the central Spanish-Portuguese border this week for a re-enactment of the 1810 Siege of Almeida.

But they fear they might have to wield pitchforks as Portuguese peasants instead of being British soldiers armed with muskets and rifles.

Before Brexit, re-enactors could obtain a free European licence alongside their shotgun licence, which is used for old-fashioned long arms, allowing them to travel freely with their weapons.

However, the activity is so niche that no provisions seem to exist for it under post-Brexit customs systems.

This is trivial in one sense - now that the issue has been brought to public attention no doubt some alleviation of the problem will take place. However, it does illustrate the problem with a fine grained regulatory state. The bureaucracy never is going to think of everything now, is it? And yet - the clue being in that “fine grained” idea - a bureaucracy which tries to insist on a rule for everything has to think of everything in order to have a rule for it.

This is merely annoying when there are some thousands who already do the thing to be regulated. Eventually, at least, the rule will be issued in a manner that allows the thing to be done. But what happens with new things that are as yet undone, but which that fine grained state insists must have a rule? There is no constituency to push for the rule, nor for the rule to be sensible.

The biggest problem with regulation isn’t that it stops us doing current things for there’s a political constituency to allow them to continue. The problem is the stopping of doing new things because, by definition, there’s no constituency extant to insist that the bureaucracy stop being so damn silly.

That there are already Napoleonic re-enactors means that a solution will be found. But if there were not, and someone were thinking of starting, then how would the rule that allowed it come into being?