It is not often that the ATF does something admirable, or even respectable, but recently the ATF has done something worth mentioning in a positive light. The ATF has announced that it will be aiming to speed up the process of approving Silencer, SBR(short barrel rifle), and other NFA item purchases and registrations.
As reported in The Reload:
The ATF delivered an early Christmas present to those looking to buy items regulated under the National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA) by offering a digital application process on Thursday. The move is part of the agency’s efforts to significantly reduce the months-long processing times for those products. The ATF said that digitizing the tax registration form and fingerprint requirement for transferring NFA items to new owners will substantially impact the overall process.
“This is an ongoing Bureau modernization and data migration project which includes the eForms system,” Erik Longnecker, a spokesperson for the agency, told The Reload. “However, one of the more notable updates is the return of the ATF eForm 4 to the system.”
The ATF has been attempting to move to a digital system for many of its required forms for several years now and has successfully reduced backlogs associated with other registration forms. In addition to offering a digitized registration form for NFA transfers, the agency also upgraded its entire digital infrastructure for handling digital registration forms of all kinds.
“The electronic filing is designed to be more efficient and accurate and will allow ATF to process the submissions more efficiently,” Longnecker said. “We anticipate there will be a similar decrease in processing times when using the eForm 4.”
While this news is good news, don’t go celebrating the ATF they still have a lot of work to do before the agency can ever be tolerated, let alone admired. The ATF has a long history of abuse regarding its authority and many consider the agency itself an infringement on the 2nd Amendment. Even this measure by ATF, while a good thing, is still a far cry from acceptable.
With these proposed changes the process is still going to take some time, it is going from what is typically a 9o day process to a 30 day one. This isn’t great by any means, especially when the entire process is considered to be unconstitutional by many.
