According to government data released to the American Suppressor Association (ASA) by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) ‘s NFA division, the number of Form 4s the ATF received in July slightly increased over the number received in June.
The ATF received 54,968 Form 4s in July, primarily for suppressors. This increase is 3% higher than the number of Form 4s submitted by customers in June, where the ATF received 53,186, but compared to July 2023, the growth of people buying suppressors is much more significant. In July of last year, the ATF only received 28,414 Form 4s, which is 94% less than in the same time period of this year. This change shows that more Americans are embracing the suppressor market.
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The ATF continues to process more Form 4s than are being submitted, continuing to cut into the backlog for individual and trust-based forms. The Bureau processed 90,203 Form 4s in July. Although the ATF is processing more forms than ever, the transfer times for Form 4 items have increased significantly. As of July 1, the ATF is taking an average of 27 extra days for individual transfers and an increase of 25 days for trust transfers.
The delay is due to the processing of more Form 4s. The number of background checks caught in a “delayed” status has increased significantly because of the increase in the number of forms submitted to the FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). The ATF cannot process a Form 4 without an NICS “approved” status, meaning background check delays artificially inflate the wait times for Form 4 approvals. Most applicants filing an individual Form 4 will receive approval in less than a week. The wait times for those using a trust are hovering around 90 days. The decrease in wait times is a welcome change for gun owners accustomed to waiting over a year for their National Firearms Act (NFA) items.
The ATF continues to improve the standard operating procedures of the NFA division, which should allow application processing to be completed faster. The bottleneck for individual forms continues to be the FBI NICS portion of the process, over which the ATF NFA division has no control. The ATF has not yet implemented new procedures for standardized single-member trust applications such as those offered by Silencer Shop and Silencer Central.
Since theoretically, the only thing that changes on a single-member standardized trust is the item information and the responsible person, it shouldn’t be necessary to read through the entire trust if it originates from a trusted source. Processing non-standardized trust presents a more significant hurdle since every trust must be read in its entirety. The reduced time needed to process other applications frees up resources to handle these one-off trusts. This reduction in required resources means even those using a customized trust are seeing a significant drop in wait times. For example, wait times for Form 4 trust applications have decreased by around a week from last month.
The changes at the ATF NFA Division are a welcome change for gun owners, at least until the NFA can be abolished or until suppressors can be deregulated.
About John Crump
John is an NRA instructor and a constitutional activist. Mr. Crump has written about firearms, interviewed people of all walks of life, and on the Constitution. John lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and sons and can be followed on Twitter at @crumpyss, or at www.crumpy.com.
A tax stamp equivalent to about three months average wages was a pretty big barrier to purchasing NFA items. A tax stamp that costs less than the average trip to the grocery store isn’t quite the same.