Tag Archives: BATFE

Enjoy the silence: There are more than 900,000 legal NFA-compliant suppressors out there

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hk 91 with suppressor and m1 garand silencerco photo

New data released last week by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives shows FFL numbers rebounding, over 9 million firearms produced in 2014, coupled with healthy import and export activity.

The statistics are part of the agency’s 2016 Annual Statistical Update of Firearm Commerce in the United States.

Sweeping in its context, the report gives the public a rare glimpse into the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record, which is the federal list of all items, such as suppressors, SBRs, short-barreled shotguns, destructive devices and any other weapons logged under the NFA as of February 2016. While this figure includes Post-86 Dealer samples, SOT production guns up for sale and LEO guns as well, most of these are in civilian hands.

Comparing last year’s report with the new information shows the aggregate number of NFA items of all kinds have climbed to 4,436,096, adding over a quarter million devices to the registry in a twelve-month period from February 2015.

This includes:

2,545,844 Destructive devices (mostly live ammunition over .50 caliber in size)
902,805 Suppressors
575,602 Machine guns
213,594 Short barreled rifles
140,474 Short barreled shotguns
57,777 AOWs (pen guns, cane guns, shorty shotgun pistols)

Suppressor numbers have just reached for the cheap seats in the past five years. In 2011, there were 285,087 cans registered– meaning U.S. silencer ownership has more than tripled in the past half-decade.

More in my column at Guns.com.

Suppressor numbers nearly 600,000 nationwide, becoming mainstream

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Once the fodder of Hollywood spy movies and pulp fiction novels, the NFA-compliant suppressor is becoming ever more common in its use and adoption with numbers at an all-time high.

No matter whether you call it a silencer, a suppressor, or just a can, the mechanism defined by the National Firearms Act of 1934 as any device for silencing, muffling, or diminishing the report of a portable firearm, is shedding decades of misinformation and rapidly becoming more and more mainstream. According to figures released by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives earlier this year, there were, as of March 2014, no less than 571,750 legal suppressors listed in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record (NFRTR).

As benchmark in the increase in the number of yearly transfers done on NFA items, such as suppressors, in 1984 the ATF collected just $666,000 in transfer and making taxes on these items. Three decades later, with no increase in the tax rate, the ATF collected almost $18.2 million in transfers, according to its 2013 figures, an increase of over 2,700 percent.

suppressed 1911as
Read the rest in my column at Guns.com, where I get the low-down on the suppressor industry from the head of the American Suppressor Association.

NFA Transfers Up

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Hat Tip Forgotten Weapons

NFA transfer requests are up significantly this year (and have been increasing steadily back to 2005. This has led to increased wait times because it has happened in conjunction with a hiring freeze and a couple retirements at ATF. They have 7 examiners now to deal with all the paperwork. It’s also worth realizing that the tax payments go into the feds’ general fund, and that money isn’t made available to ATF to hire more examiners. Not that I mean to stick up for them, but we have to understand how the situation works before we can try to fix it.

The other major change that was discussed at the NFATCA meeting this past weekend was the removal of the chief law enforcement officer (CLEO) signature on transfers. For those of you who may not be familiar with the process, right now you have to inform your local chief cop when submitting an NFA transfer, and they sign the ATF form acknowledging this. Well, lots of them have decided to simply refuse to sign the forms in order to prevent their subjects constituents from being able to buy neat toys.

This action, of course, was not without unintended consequences. Some savvy folks noticed that legally, a machine gun or other NFA item could be purchased by a corporation or living trust, and the law did not require CLEO sign-off for transfers to those types of legal entities (and since corporations and trusts are not people, those transfers also did not require photo, fingerprints, or background checks). Today, there is a booming business in NFA transfers to trusts. In addition to bypassing much of the hassle of the transfer process, a trust is originally intended to facilitate inheritance, and allows one’s inheritors to be written right into the trust and take possession of a gun upon the buyer’s death without any additional paperwork (assuming the trust is written correctly)……(read more at Forgotten Weapons)

 

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