41P – LonelyMachines

ATF Pushing Ahead with 41P

A year ago, the President advanced a number of regulatory proposals on gun control. One of the more esoteric ones involved changing the way trusts are handled in regards to NFA firearms.

The original action date was to have been last June, but the BATFE was deluged with comments. While action appeared to have been pushed back to 2015, the Bureau has recently published a draft form [pdf].

Essentially, any “responsible party” of a trust or corporation must now file this form and seek approval from local law enforcement. That approval is impossible to obtain in many areas.

The BATFE stands to gain nothing. They’re saddled with the paperwork, but it doesn’t generate any revenue. As such, I doubt they’ll hire on more examiners to address the workload. The end result will be an exponential growth in wait times for NFA approvals across the board.

There’s no saying when 41P might be enacted, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the administration wants to rush this one in before the midterms so they can show some success on gun control.

Civil Rights

41P on Hold for Now

The American Silencer Association met with the ATF yesterday, and this is what we know about the proposed rule change:

There were 9500 comments, 1000 of which were rejected for “vulgarity, anonymity, or non-applicability.” (Thanks for the Obama Kenya Nazi thing, Joe Bob)
The ATF has to respond to every comment in writing. This means, even if they decide to go ahead with the rule change, it will be at least six months to a year before it takes effect.
We don’t know if Forms 1 and 4 already in process will be affected. Based on history, the ASA thinks not.

Nonetheless, wait times are averaging 9-10 months right now. It would be a good idea to get those applications into the pipeline sooner rather than later.

The NFATCA are the folks who got us into this mess in the first place, and they have a table at SHOT Show this week.

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Info Dump

Proposed Changes to NFA Rules

One of the “executive actions” the President proposed last month has been submitted to the Federal Register as a rules change proposal. It involves changing the way NFA items are registered to trusts.

When paying the tax and registering an NFA weapon, one can register it to himself as an individual. However, if he wants to grant possession to someone else, it has to be transferred again, thus incurring another round of paperwork, delay, and remuneration to the ATF. He also has to secure approval from his local Chief Law Enforcement Officer (CLEO), usually a sheriff or police chief. Such approval is at the discretion of the officer, and many choose not to grant it.

The alternative is to register the weapon to a trust. In that case, local law enforcement need not be involved, and other parties may be granted access to the weapon by simply adding them as trustees.

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