ATF Form 4 Times Plummet

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Form 4 wait times used to be the running joke at the NFA counter — "buy it now, pick it up sometime around your next birthday." That's genuinely not the case anymore.

"While no citizen should have to wait any amount of time to procure their lawfully purchased firearms and firearm products, the reduction in ATF Form 4 processing times from roughly 150 days to around 18 days today is a meaningful improvement."

Hard to argue with that math. If you've got a can on order right now, 18 days changes the whole calculus on whether NFA items are worth the hassle — especially for newer shooters who never survived an 18-month wait.

"Individual Form 4s now average six days. Trust Form 4s still run 26 days. Electronic Form 1s (permission to manufacture an NFA item) average 59 days — more than three times the Form 4 baseline."

Worth knowing before you fill out paperwork. If you're on a trust — which a lot of us use for shared household access — your wait is still four times longer than an individual transfer. And if you're thinking about building on a Form 1, 59 days is still two months in limbo. The headline average hides some real variation depending on how you're filing.

The SAF lawsuit angle is the one I'm watching. If a court rules there's no legal basis for registration when there's no longer a tax attached, Form 4 times for suppressors and SBRs become irrelevant. That's a bigger shift than any processing efficiency the ATF can claim credit for.

For those of you who've bought NFA items — what's your recent actual experience been, and are you filing individual or through a trust?

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Read the full article in The Handbook → | By Steve Duskett