Ok so bear with me here, I was up late last night pondering the ways of the world. This is more of a thought exercise.

I’m sure most here believe the NFA in its entirety is unconstitutional to begin with. We would all like for it to go away but lets be realistic, it’s not going anywhere unless the Supreme Court does something drastic.

Based on the current situation with the ATF going through the process of all forms, paper or e-file their is no process which makes sense in regards of how long they take to approve or even examine the forms.

My thought process is that if the NFA isn’t going away, should we be pushing for a system for better approval.
(I KNOW, I’m crazy and we don’t want to give the ATF more power).

Most states that have or require licensing for firearms wether it be for purchase or carry have laws and guidelines about processing times for how long the state or town has to approve or deny that license or permit.
The recent Bruen case at the Supreme Court also said licensing is allowed but can’t be overly burdensome or something to that effect.

We also approved the hiring of 87,000 new IRS agents so for the sake of this argument, money is not an object or deference since our government is clearly printing unlimited money as well as taxing us and we have no say about it.

Since the new IRS agents technically can handle and access tax documents and personal information, why don’t we as gun owners push to create a bill that mandates ATF only has a certain amount of time to process NFA items. Say for instance a 6 month timeframe and put some teeth in the bill that applicants can sue the ATF if they go past the allowed timeframe to process.

I can’t think of any reason this couldn’t be done other then “it’s the ATF and they don’t answer to anyone or care”.
In this case we are not asking for the process to be eliminated or really changed for that matter, all this does is put a timeline on the matter.

Well, when you go to purchase a firearm, if you don’t get an answer on the background check in 5 days, I believe, you can go pick up the firearm before the check comes back. They should do that with the NFA. Apply for a suppressor, if you don’t get an answer in a month, go get it. Put some fire under their asses!

It can be simplified all the way down to requiring only a NICS check prior to transfer and simply allowing the dealer to collect the $200 and submit the form 4 post sale. Until you get the stamp in the mail it could just be required for the owner to possess a copy of the 4473 with the NICS approval proving legal ownership. At that point if it takes a year to get the actual stamp it really doesn't even matter.

I agree with both of you but again for this arguments sake, all it would do is put a timeline that they legally have to process within.

The money is already there when you think about it. How much does the average person make a week?
If you process a few forms per day it more than covers the cost of a salary, benefits and all aspects of the employee.

Pay the people working at NFA by how many they approve per week.
Sit back, pop some popcorn and watch the stamps flow like the might Mississippi.

So why give them so long? I can't think of any reason it takes as long as it does. There's literally no reason we can't do it all over the counter just like we do with normal guns.

Exactly. Do it on a commission basis and that shit would look like lightning.

Make it two weeks if you want, the point is to speed up the process in a easy solution. Obviously eliminating the NFA would be best but we can all laugh together about that idea.

The ATF and anyone with three brain cells for that matter is fully aware of how to speed up approval times.  They take this long because the people in a position to implement a fix either:

A) Despise you (my favorite)
or
B) Don't give a fuck

Proof that they know how to speed things up is that any time waits start to get long they top off at a year.  If it gets much longer than that we'er in a winning lawsuit position due to delayed rights.

The real solution is to get people in charge that actually care about our rights to implement a fix.  But then this is a moot point because if we had enough power to fix this the ATF and NFA would go away.

There’s a work around to all of this.
Fast wait times, tax free registration, exempt from import laws, and can have post 86 MG’s.

A state government would just have to form a state guard that every individual who’s not a convicted felon between the ages 18 to 99 is eligible for joining.

They can be a reserve only able to be called up in times of enemy attack, and must furnish their own weapons and train on their own time and are to be stored at home like the Swiss guard does.

Weapons purchased by the members become state property and issued to the purchaser but can be sold back if not a post 86 machine gun for one dollar once they resign from the guard.

Any sales to a non guard member from a guard member would go out on a form 5 and thus be tax exempt.

Your prompt answers itself - the ATF has no mandate or incentive to speed anything up. Their process (unconstitutional as it may be) has decades of precedence to stand on and the # of people actively pushing for change microscopic.

We're trying to change something that is
1. Legally settled (BS, I know)
2. Has an entire agency's bureaucratic momentum behind it
3. An irrelevant topic for 98% of voters

How many NFA examiners are there?  Given the relatively examiner names listed in various threads, there probably aren’t that many.  Maybe a dozen?  According to the ATF webpage, they processed 512,315 forms in 2020.  I’m betting there are already above that number in 2022.  Using the 2020 numbers, and assuming 12 examiners, each examiner does 42,693 per year, or 821 per week (assuming no holidays, vacations, etc).  Back in 2010, there were only about 92,000 applications in a year.  I doubt they increased the number of examiners by a factor of 5 over those 10 years to keep up with the increase in applications.  I think a lot of the backlog is due to them not having enough people, rather than people not working hard enough.

All of this bullshit could be avoided if they just followed one simple rule.
Shall Not Be Infringed.

Eta: Week 1 of E-Form 4 on 2 suppressors. Tick tock.

Another thought.

Simple improvement would be to do batch approval.   I currently have 2 Form 1s and 2 Form 4s (all efiled). Why cant ATF simply do  the database search and review all Forms that match the applicant’s name.   In my case it would be 75% efficient gain, vs. doing 4 different reviews separately.  This would be applicable to Efiled applications.

Don’t know of any other entity where one would spend $800 and wait not know when the product/service will be available/delivered.  Excluding  COVID environment.

Just an idea.

Don't be expecting it quickly, currently 135 days on efile form 4. So much for 90 day turn around

SilencerCo is telling me 180 days right now.
Meh, my first SBR/Can combo took 14 months. 6 is going to seem fast by comparison.
Sure would be nice to have it by opening day, but that isn't happening this year.

I’m at 188 on mine. 145 on a second.

Guys, please don’t turn this into another tracking thread.

This is a thought exercise to put a legal timeline on the issue. Once a timeline is established there are many ways to accomplish this. It’s a matter of setting up a limit and creat opportunity.

With eforms, it seems like it should be simple enough to approve multiple forms per customer at one time. After they complete a background check/review/whatever for a form, just search that customers name and approve or deny any other pending forms they may have

Or? Really?

Try “And”




Mine took 60 days.

Paper Form 4 took 58 days.

Both were filed in June and May, respectively.

I would move it to 5 minutes. Over the counter. Here you are bud, go enjoy it.

This is the best answer. Right now there is no incentive to improve the process, people respond to incentives.

I don’t know what the best solution is, but what I have derived over the years is this;

Examiners – 27 identified Examiners (from the threads here.  Likely there is more).  I have been told by an examiner, that they are grouped by “teams” (Example, Eform 1 team, etc.).  Many of the examiner’s crossover to the other forms.  Basically, they are on two teams.  Its likely the examiners I have not identified as crossovers are assigned to other teams that we do not track (Govt. xfers, FFL to FFL xfers, etc.)

Eform 1’s – 10 Examiners (1 also does EF4’s and 5 do F4’s)

Eform 4’s – 9 Examiners (1 also does EF1’s and 2 do F4’s)

Paper Form 4’s – 16 Examiners (5 also do EF1’s and 2 do EF4’s)


Bottom line, 27 people processing 500k plus forms a year..... they need more people is the first place to start.

You would think that 500K form a year x $200 would be incentive to find a way to process them faster.

They get the money on day 1, why would they care how long the process takes after that

The money goes into the fund, not the NFA branch.  Because of that their funding is independent of how much revenue they generate.

I would buy more if the process didn't take so long. I believe others would too, plus a quick turnaround would likely get more people into the game.

I think if someone called me and said I had to submit $200. In target gift cards to process my form 4,  I'd probably send them, even if the caller couldn't speak English.

And that's probably why they are slow to turn these around.....

Think about it.  How many people are truly willing to have thousands if not tens of thousands of their $$ tied up for 6 months or longer with nothing in return during that timeframe?  probably more than I think, but much less than really want to get into the game.

The whole purpose of the nfa is to discourage ownership of these weapons.
Congress was told that they couldn't ban them, so they made it extremely difficult to buy, or make them.
In 1934 $200 was a HUGE amount of money. Just be glad that they haven't kept it up with inflation.
They have zero incentive, or want, to speed the process up.

While it’s correct that the original purpose of the NFA was to discourage people from getting them, the current ATF is doing an astonishing poor job at this.  If they really wanted to cut it down, they wouldn’t have bothered rolling out eForms.  There is no doubt that bringing out eForm 4 has created an explosion of submissions, just like the number of SBR submissions shot up when they dropped the eForm 1s a few years ago.  If they really wanted to discourage people from getting NFA items, they would have kept paper forms and waiting 6 months for a Form 1 and 1 year for a Form 4.

EF4 will be a year soon.  Fast EF1 encourages you to put something that would have had a brace in a federal database.  Win win for them.