Articles Posted in ATF 41F ( 41P)

While at the NRA Firearms Law Seminar in Nashville,  ATF ‘s attorney William Ryan made some interesting comments about the ATF, NFA, GCA and Gun Trusts:

1. A trust can be a beneficiary of a will or other trust and obtain a tax free transfer using a Form 5 if the trust or will is drafted correctly.
2. A Trust can be a beneficiary of a will if there is an order from the probate court directing the distribution to a trust, otherwise one might have to transfer to an individual on a Form 5 and then pay $200 to transfer items to a trust.

Great news! The ASA is reporting that the time to process a Form 4 with a Gun Trust has continued to decrease and looks like the time will continue to decrease. Less than a year ago the average wait time was in excess of 12 months. A few months ago the time was reduced to 6-9 months. The current time is 4-6 months, and if you are processing a trust now, you could see an even shorter time as ATF clears their backlog. ATF is continuing to hire and train more people to process the increasing number of ATF Form 4s and Form 1s.

Even better news is that we may see a new electronic Form 4 announced in January at the Shot Show.

41P UPDATE

Late in 2013, the ATF published a notice that they intended to seek to revise the regulations regarding the documentation that is required for a Gun Trust and for a business. After the ATF received more than 9500 comments on the proposed changes, the ATF had originally announced that a decision was set to be published in June of this year. As the June date has approached, we have reported that it was unlikely that the ATF would actually be able to review and respond to the comments by the June date and that the ATF was not likely to be able to respond until 2015.

In the latest publication of the Semi-Annual Regulatory Agenda, ATF updated the date of the projected date to show that ATF does not expect to publish a final rule until 2015.

DOJ/ATF RIN: 1140-AA43 Publication ID: Spring 2014

The Americans Opposed to ATF 41P reported today that the American Silencer Association has talks with the ATF during the Shot Show where the ATF stated that they never anticipated the number of comments to 41P that they received and only had one person working part-time on addressing the comments. At that time ATF anticipated that it would take a year or two before they were able to determine whether they were going to move forward and if so to what extent they would try to implement any changes.

There were several major comments to 41P including ours that can be reviewed at https://www.guntrustlawyer.com/41p.html which should be able to challenge the ATF if the ATF should try to implement the changes because of the numerous violations of the Administrative Procedures Act.

So what does this mean?