Today the ATF released new processing times based upon December 2013. The are now reporting the the average times for processing an ATF Form 1 to make and register a firearms is 9 months and the average time on an ATF Form 4 to transfer and register a NFA firearm in 9 months. We have seen significantly reduced times when applying electronically. Below are the times for each type of transfer and or application as reported by the ATF. It is interesting to see that they are taking 3 months to approve / process a transfer on a Form 3 and 2 months on a form 2. That means, it is taking ATF 2 months to approve the manufacture and 3 months to approve the transfer to a dealer. More than 5 months are required just to make and send a suppressor to your dealer so that you can wait an additional 9 months to take it home. The ATF will update this information every 90 days so we can see the trend.
As more people file electronically, we could start to experience longer wait times but for now we are hearing that many electronic Form 4s and Form 1s are taking between 3-6 months instead of 9-12 months for the traditional forms.