What’s going on guys? It’s Hai.
I previously made a video detailing my experience with Silencer Shop’s eForms 4 service. Well, I recently logged into my Silencer Shop web portal and noticed something I’ve never seen before and that was a new tab that said ATF eForm 1 Beta. This completely caught me off guard because if you’ve been keeping up with SilencerShop for a while, you’d know that they previously offered a Form 1 service but stopped quite a while ago. So again, this new eForm 1 tab was a bit confusing. I tried looking around the internet but it didn’t seem like anyone noticed this and Silencer Shop themselves also didn’t seem to have mentioned it. Well, I figured with the current state of pistol braces as of December 2022, let’s see what this is all about. After looking around, I saw a pop-up that said something like this is a trial service that they’re offering to the first 1000 customers. This pop-up has now disappeared but this service is definitely in beta and is a soft launch.
Now to backtrack, if you’re unfamiliar, an ATF Form 1 is a request to create an NFA item. This is most commonly associated with turning a rifle into a short-barrel rifle, a normal length shotgun into a short-barrel shotgun, creating a suppressor from parts, or something along those lines. I personally, have never been into actually registering an SBR or SBS because there are pros and cons to it. The cons include not being able to have a loaded rifle in a car, at least for Washington residents, if you want to travel across state lines, you’d have to request government approval, and of course you have to pay the $200 tax stamp. For me, the only real pro is to be able to run a stock on a less than 16” barreled upper. That wasn’t something I cared about because I have some really good pistol braces. But again, because pistol braces may be banned pretty soon, I just wanted to experiment and know my options.
It took some personal persuasion but I decided to give the Silencer Shop eForms 1 portal a try and SBR’ed one of my lowers. At this point in time, to do this all you have to do is click the “Start New Form 1” button and a popup shows up. From here, you choose the manufacturer name of your weapon’s manufacturer and the country in which they reside. I chose to SBR my Primary Weapons Systems lower. Then we’re taken to the next page where we enter the firearm model, serial number, firearm type, caliber, barrel length, and overall length. If you’ve ever Form 1 something before, all of this should look very familiar as it’s straight from the regular ATF Form 1 site. If you haven’t, there are plenty of tutorials on YouTube on how to fill this paperwork out. That’s how I learned and suggest for you to do your own research because I am no expert in this. But, once you get all this information filled in, it’s just a matter of clicking save and paying for the service. You of course have the $200 tax stamp, but Silencer Shop charges $205, and they also charge $50 for this service, so you’re looking at $255 out the door.
The next step is to wait for Silencer Shop to review your application and mark it Ready to Certify. Once they do this, the portal will take you to the ATF’s website where you essentially just verify all the information, submit the application, and wait for your approval. Certifying through this service is not like a Form 4 where you have to certify with an FFL. With the Form 1, you do it by yourself so it’s more convenient. I started this process on 12/23 and certified on 12/24 so this can be a very quick process. I do want to note that when I verified, the ATF’s site was extremely slow to load. Like I thought it just wasn’t working and was stuck on a loading page but again, it was just very slow to load each step and there were quite a few steps to go through. I just left the page open and did something else.
Again, I’m no expert in Form 1 stuff. This is my first application but I do want to note a few things that I saw during this process.
First, as with many other things with the Silencer Shop site, this portal is buggy. When I tried to pay for everything, I kept getting an error saying “Error reserving firearms”. Naturally, I thought this was a website thing so I resubmitted two more times. Well, it turns out that although I got the error, payment actually went through and I got hit with 3 tax stamp purchases. So, I had to send some emails to Silencer Shop to fix this and they ended up refunding me for the unused tax stamps.
The next issue is with the application process and how you fill it out. As previously shown, a few of the fields that you need to fill out are just drop-down options. There’s no way to edit them and this is a problem because those fields are not completely accurate. Again, I SBR’ed my PWS lower but I first attempted to do this with a Radian Weapons lower. The lower’s model number is the A-DAC 15. This is not an option on Silencer Shop’s portal and they’re getting these options directly from the ATF. You may think that you can just choose another option, but if things don’t accurately line up, your application is going to get denied. Realistically, my Radian lower cannot be registered with this system currently. I sent an email to Silencer Shop about this and they’ve updated the website to include a little disclaimer about this.
Another issue with the Silencer Shop form is with the caliber choice and your various measurements. When doing a Form 1, even though your lower may be multi-cal, you can only choose one caliber. To include other calibers, the regular Form 1 application gives you a description box where you can write in other calibers that you’d like to include. This also goes for different barrel lengths and overall lengths. What I’m getting at is if you use this Silencer Shop Form 1 portal as of the time of this video, you’re pretty much locked into one caliber and one set of measurements. To get around this, after the Form 1 has been approved, you can write the ATF a physical letter to ask to include other calibers and barrel lengths that you’d like to use. They may approve this but it can add an undetermined amount of time to the entire process.
So, if this is the case, then why use this Silencer Shop Form 1 service? Well, to me, it’s purely about convenience. If you already have a Silencer Shop account and you’ve gone through the process to get everything uploaded for a Form 4, SilencerShop will have all the information that they need to get the Form 1 completed. They’ll just reuse that information and look up other information that’s needed like the appropriate chief of police to contact and include it in your application. They’ll also have your fingerprints so you won’t need to get a copy of that. This service just streamlines the entire process.
Then on top of this, Silencer Shop is also now expanding its Single Shot Trust, which was previously only available with Form 4s, to Form 1s. I already have the Single Shot Unlimited Trust so I can add a trust to my Form 1 with no extra cost. However, because the site is still in beta, it didn’t recognize that I already have the Single Shot Unlimited Trust and still asks me if I want to buy one. I declined but the Silencer Shop associates went through my application and added it on their end.
Again, although the current Silencer Shop eForm 1 Beta service is a bit buggy and limited, it is without a doubt the most convenient way to submit a Form 1. I’ve personally gone ahead and given it a try and will hopefully get a response fairly quick. I’ll definitely be making more content to update you guys about this process in the near future so make sure to subscribe for that.
