About NFAWait

NFAWait is an independent, single-purpose tracker of National Firearms Act processing times. We publish daily wait-time data for ATF Form 1, Form 4 Individual, and Form 4 Trust applications — drawn from official ATF figures and major NFA dealers in real time.

What we do

Every day, at roughly 7am U.S. Eastern, we pull the latest published processing times from three independent sources:

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) — the only official source. We capture the publicly-listed eForms Form 1, Form 4 Individual, and Form 4 Trust wait times.
Silencer Shop — the largest online NFA dealer. They publish their own observed approval windows, which usually differ from ATF's because their customer base skews toward individual (not trust) filers.
Silencer Central — another large NFA dealer with their own customer mix and approval history.

We blend those three numbers into a single daily NFAWait index, plot the trends, and publish a written analysis — usually within an hour of the data being available.

Why this exists

If you've ever filed an ATF Form 4, you know the wait can stretch from days to months to over a year — and the only way to find out how long is to dig through Reddit threads, ATF press releases, and dealer forums. The data is fragmented. Nobody was publishing a single, current, reliable number.

So we built one. Every morning. Free, no signup, no email gate.

Not legal advice. NFAWait is an informational resource. We are not attorneys, and nothing on this site constitutes legal advice. If you have a question about your specific filing, consult a licensed attorney specializing in firearms law — see our gun trust guide or the National Firearms Act Trade Association for referrals.

Who runs this

NFAWait is run by a small team of NFA enthusiasts and software engineers. None of us are affiliated with the ATF, Silencer Shop, or Silencer Central. We don't sell suppressors, NFA trusts, or any related products. We don't take advertising from any of the dealers we track.

The site is built and maintained as an independent project, hosted on a single shared server. Our only goal is to make NFA wait-time data easier to find, easier to compare, and easier to act on.

How we handle data

Sources

All three sources publish their data in different ways. We capture each one and normalize to a single comparable format. Where sources disagree (and they often do — Silencer Shop and ATF frequently report different Form 4 Trust numbers), we publish both and let you decide which is most relevant to your situation.

Update frequency

Daily. If the data didn't change from yesterday, we still re-pull it to confirm. We log every scrape to a local file and surface any data quality issues (a missing value, a stuck number, an outlier) in the daily article.

What we don't track

Form 1 eFile paper submissions, individual trust approval times, gun-trust transfer times, and the eForms queue depth. These are either too small a sample, too rarely reported, or not publicly accessible. If you have a specific data point you'd like to see tracked, get in touch.

Editorial principles

No hype. We don't editorialize. We report numbers and provide context.
Sources cited. Every claim in our articles is traceable back to a data point or a specific source.
Corrections welcomed. If you spot an error, email us. We fix fast.
No paywall, no signup. Everything is free and open. We may add an opt-in newsletter eventually; it will always be free.

Coverage and limitations

Right now we cover:

Form 1 (eFile and paper) wait times — from ATF only
Form 4 Individual wait times — from ATF, Silencer Shop, Silencer Central
Form 4 Trust wait times — from ATF, Silencer Shop, Silencer Central

We do not currently track:

State-specific processing times (ATF processes nationally, not per-state, but some people search this way — we have state pages for the most-searched states)
Brand-specific wait times (we have brand pages with general guidance)
Tax stamp processing separately (it's bundled with Form 1 / Form 4)
Individual dealer-specific approval times beyond Silencer Shop and Silencer Central

Contact

For corrections, suggestions, partnerships, or to point out a data quality issue, see our contact page or email admin@nfawait.com.