I'm Thinking of Getting My First Suppressor

dogtown tom said:

Whoever told you that doesn't sell many silencers. eForm 4's from mid March are just now being approved. I have yet to get an April eForm approval.

While some of the earliest eForm 4 submissions experienced very quick processing, that ended within a few weeks.

Click to expand...

Same. We had a bunch inside of 3 months at first, some in less than 2. But then there was a dearth of approvals for some time before they started trickling back in at 5, 6 months. Like you, we're currently seeing mid-late March submissions, so were telling people to bet on 7 or 8 months.

Of course, the Dec 28th rules are probably gonna make a mess of that, though F1 stuff seems to follow a very different path. F1 guys are still seeing approvals in weeks, some even days, and all the pistol gone SBR stuff will be F1.

Many ignore the fact that staffing at the NFA Division is static and adding additional employees or contract workers rides on the whims of Congress. Congress doesn't care that you had a six month wait in 2008 and you are at sixteen months in 2022.


National Firearms Commerce and Trafficking Assessment: https://www.atf.gov/file/166881/download
Although that report only covers NFA up until 2020, you can see how the volume of forms fluctuates by year on pages 88, 89 & 90.

Interesting tidbits:
page 94: NFA Examiners staffing is the orange line. Nine NFA Examiners for 95,000 forms in 2010, Forty one Examiners for 551,000 forms in 2020.
page 97: As of March 31 , 2022, there are 312,652 NFA applications pending. Based on 2020 examiner staffing levels, there are approximately 7,625 applications awaiting review per examiner.
page 99: Silencers accounted for 41.8% of applications. DD's for 38.6%.
page 100: The NFA firearm manufactured in greatest numbers? Destructive Devices (because it includes certain ammunition and devices such as flash bangs) 51% of NFA.
page 102: "The annual number of NFA applications received has grown considerably over the last twenty years with a 1,231 % increase in annual applications received between 2000 (41,412) and 2020 (551,074).

While not NFA directly:
page 116: Only about 35% of all FFL types operate from a commercial or industrial location.