Yep, if I get the stamp back by Christmas, I'll feel satisfied.
...things started backing up bad in June/July/August...
I've noticed this, and I feel lucky that my last one was what it was.
But back to your quote; this was the very time period (June/July 2011) when the NFA branch rearranged their examiners to an assignment by state ->
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=598901
It obviously did
not help us in any way.
Then again, we might start to see a trend -statewise- in the speed these examiners are able to do their work. NFAtracker.com has been able to show that certain examiners do their work much quicker than others, and everyone on the web began to hope that their F4 was put on
such'n'such's desk, because that examiner was quickest.
Those reports showed that the slowest examiner averaged more than a month & a half longer duration than the quickest.
That's a drastic difference; it would mean that I might get my suppressor at the first of November rather than by Christmas.
I doubt NFAtracker.com reset their data last summer to get a baseline for the new assignment-by-state system, but if they would have begun sorting their reports by the end user's state, it might begin to show that living in a particular state will give you an advantage or disadvantage for the approval.
I believe Sandra Snook was my examiner last year. She used to be one of the slower ones, but with the new by-state assignment, she's one of the quicker ones now. Of course, she only reviews forms from
three states while another examiner, Bill Shipman, is in charge of
nine states. Three times as many, but regardless, he's still quicker than she is.
According to the site's reports;
http://nfatracker.com/reports.aspx