Will Trump’s ATF Restore Form 1 Applications to Pre-Biden Standards?

AmmoLand ^ | July 18, 2025 | Dean Weingarten

[marktwain]

In 2022, the ATF changed the procedures for filling out a Form 1 to make your own silencer. The ATF denied about 850 applications. The ATF claimed “Solvent Traps” were actually suppressors, started denying Form 1 applications, and required much more information about how a silencer was to be manufactured, and what parts would be used to make the silencer.

Senators and representatives sent two letters, one from Representatives and one from Senators, to the Biden ATF asking for clarification of what the ATF was doing. Here is an excerpt from the Senate letter submitted to ATF on March 16, 2022:

We request answers to the following questions:

1. Please explain why the ATF is denying Form 1 applications for silencers.

2. Please explain whether these denials reflect a change in policy in how the ATF regulates self-made silencers.

3. Please explain what the ATF has done to inform the American people of its position regarding a Form 1 application and devices it believes are silencer “kits,” so that law abiding Americans can attempt to comply with the law.

4. Please explain how the ATF evaluates whether a Form 1 application for a silencer is going to be used for a kit that, in ATF’s view, is already legally a silencer.

5. Please explain why the ATF has repeatedly approved Form 1 applications for silencers made from “kits” if the agency’s policy is that one or more items in the “kits” are considered silencers.

6. Please explain how the ATF intends to handle approved Form 1 applications that occurred before February 28, 2022 for silencers made from “kits.”

7. Please explain how the ATF plans to make tax-free registration available for applicants who in good faith attempted to comply with federal law.

[marktwain]

The Biden administration ATF never answered these letters. As the National Firearms Act (NFA) on silencers is scheduled to go to zero on January 1, 2026, the number or applications to make your own silencer should soar.

It will if ATF removes the burdensome requirements it put on the Form 1 application process.

[Openurmind]

Honestly the whole concept is ignorant in the first place. If someone wants to use a silencer to commit a crime they can build a one time throw away silencer in just a few minutes from household garbage and common plumbing parts. So none of this control actually prevents anything.

[marktwain]

It prevents the law abiding from protecting their hearing.

The NFA defacto ban on silencers has been one of the worst public health debacles of the federal government.

Go to a gun show. Talk to long time gun owners and veterans. The most common word you may hear will be “What?” because of all the hearing loss.

[George from New England]

Fire ATF staff 100%

[Openurmind]

I stand corrected. It does prevent one thing then, but not for positive reasons.

I think they are subconsciously stuck in the 40s and 50s movies where the “Hitman” always screws on a silencer before making the hit. Almost all of them did that in every movie. They are trying to enforce a fake world vs the real world.

[verum ago]

The NFA defacto ban on silencers has been one of the worst public health debacles of the federal government.

It's insane to me that in the very pro-gun (in the big picture) USA, suppressors are reviled as somehow inherently dirty or evil by so many.

Yet in many comparatively anti-gun European countries, equipping a rifle with a suppressor is considered simple common sense, as it quite frankly should be.

What a strange state of affairs. Why deliberately subject people to something harmfully loud? It's just as dumb as legislation requiring an extensive application and background check to equip a vehicle with a muffler would be.

[wally_bert]

The pistols used in Hawaii 5-0’s “Didn’t We Meet at a Murder?” had some plastic covers or parts of bottles attached to suppress noise and catch the spent round.

They looked interesting but no idea if they would really work.

Great episode.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0598040/

[marktwain]

It’s insane to me that in the very pro-gun (in the big picture) USA, suppressors are reviled as somehow inherently dirty or evil by so many.

---

Silencers/suppressors were included in the NFA for dubious reasons. An ATF official I met at the Shot Show told me his mentor at the ATF told him silencers were included by the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration because the Department of the Interior was worried about them being used to poach animals in the National Parks.

It is about as good as explanation as any. The NFA was a power grab by FDR’s attorney general in 1934. What was originally proposed was registration and licensing of all handguns. Machineguns, silencers, and short barreled shotguns were not as important. Short barreled rifles were added, because of the insistence of a Minnisota representative who had pull on the Ways and Means committee. His “reasoning” was bizarre.

https://www.ammoland.com/2021/06/short-barreled-rifles-were-not-to-be-regulated-nfa/

The NRA managed to stop the registration and licensing of handguns. The others remained as a “consolation prize” for the FDR administration.

If anything shows the insanity of federal gun legislation, it is the effective banning of silencers and short barreled firearms.

[Openurmind]

Yes, it is an extremely simple concept. These laws do absolutely nothing to prevent someone from making and using one to commit a crime.

[PROCON]

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[NorthMountain]

Honestly the whole concept is ignorant in the first place.

That applies to 'gun control' laws and policies generally. They all infringe (at least) on the liberties of Citizens because criminals behave badly.

[Aeneas2112]

The only thing Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms should be is three aisles at Walmart.

[skepsel]

Another suppressed European rifle, a stay behind anti-material rifle, from the very cool Forgotten Weapons site:

https://youtube.com/shorts/tF35HM9ziBQ?si=q9Tkyu-OQ9I2gttJ