Mailed in Form 4 for M16...the wait begins

**The Dumb Gun Collector** · 09-28-08, 21:39

I mailed it on Sept 22. They apparently deposited my check immediately because it just cleared my bank. Is that normal?

**usp45ss** · 09-28-08, 22:31

Yep. Completely normal. In true .gov fashion, they are very good at taking the money. The rest takes time.

The first thing they do is take the check as deposit it before forwarding your form 4 to West Virginia.

**akviper** · 09-29-08, 03:15

Welcome to the land of Title II firearms. Now is a good time to start stocking up on 5.56 ammo so you can break it in properly.

I bought my first two guns back in 85. ATF was not user friendly back then. I waited eleven months for my Swedish K and eighteen months for my M1A1 Thompson Form 4s to get back to my dealer. The interesting thing was that both forms were sent together. One would think that when one was approved they would approve the second but apparently not SOP.

Now the wait time is measured in weeks instead of years. Have fun.

**mtk** · 10-01-08, 17:51

The NFA Branch is worlds better today than it ever was while in DC.

With that said, it is still quite a joke by any normal, business standard.

For example, I purchased a few suppressors a while back from a vendor in Oklahoma. He's an FFL/SOT, as is my guy on this end. That Form 3 took two days to process. Two days. That is reasonable, given that both parties are FFL/SOT's and there should be very little required to approve such a transfer. (The fact that such speed has probably left most of the readers of my post speechless is, in a nutshell, the whole point.)

One of the suppressors turned out to have the wrong finish, due to bad assumptions on both ends of the deal. Long story short, one can had to go back. That Form 3 is at two weeks and counting and will most likely take 2 months. For a transfer between two FFL/SOT's.

Only in government can a two day job be dragged out for two months and you not get fired.

Or maybe I'm just a bit testy because one of my recent purchases has three Form 3's and a Form 4 to go before it actually gets to me. I'm guessing I'll get around April, give or take a month.

Oh yeah, you can also thank Congress for the genius play of sending paperwork to Atlanta to cash a check and then forwarding it to West Virginia for actual processing. As if they don't have banks in WV or something.