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Form 4 to Dealer Time


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What's the current average wait time for a Form 4 to dealer taking?

I purchased a transferable from a large dealer, on an incoming Form 4. Was told the process was already a month or two in when I bought it, and it's been another 4 months since I purchased (so around 6 months total). Seems quite long from my experience.

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My initial 5 month F4 to dealer transfer listed above was with a Texas dealer coming from an estate. I have another transfer pending now with MWT that started in November and they said to expect 45-60 days.  We are well beyond that now. That is likely ATF but I’ve been told from others to expect another wait from them after approval. Next time I will likely pay extra for something already on a form 3. I was warned they are slow but also reliable which does count for a lot. 

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10 hours ago, Texascbr said:

My initial 5 month F4 to dealer transfer listed above was with a Texas dealer coming from an estate. I have another transfer pending now with MWT that started in November and they said to expect 45-60 days.  We are well beyond that now. That is likely ATF but I’ve been told from others to expect another wait from them after approval. Next time I will likely pay extra for something already on a form 3. I was warned they are slow but also reliable which does count for a lot. 

Mine was "approved" back in January (possibly earlier, but they didn't mention it until I asked). I waited another month and they still hadn't received the gun, so I asked for a refund. I'm going on 2 weeks right now and still have not received a refund either - but they did list it back up for sale the next day.

They had initially told me a month or two max. from July '23, as the transfer was already in process.

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2 hours ago, Michael_Westen said:

I submitted my Form 4 eForm 4/4/25 and got an email on 4/8/25 with the approved Form 4. A day and a half ain't bad.

This thread is about form 4 from a non dealer to a dealer, which unfortunately cannot use eforms so it has to go the paper route- which is why it takes a lot longer. 
 

but you are correct- a day and a half for eform4 is great. Hope it continues 

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Waiting a month as of now.  I don't think I will buy a gun on an individual form 4 in the future.  I had an eform 3 and then the eform 4 clear in 4 days for both. Paper shouldn't take this much longer.  Of course it's better than the old days where they took months if you were lucky.  

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Still waiting on mine from MWT as well. Gun was listed for sale at the end of November, so I'm assuming the transfer to them started around that time. They told me incoming Form 4s were coming back in 30-45 days when I bought in early December. At this point, it's been 5 months, and every time I call, it's "Oh we're expecting it any day now. A bunch of others from around that time just got approved." I am fully aware that we're all at the mercy of ATF bureaucracy, and wait times can be arbitrarily long (I remember how things were 20+ years ago), but after talking with a few dealers and reading all of this here, something doesn't seem right.

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7 hours ago, spstreckfus said:

Still waiting on mine from MWT as well. Gun was listed for sale at the end of November, so I'm assuming the transfer to them started around that time. They told me incoming Form 4s were coming back in 30-45 days when I bought in early December. At this point, it's been 5 months, and every time I call, it's "Oh we're expecting it any day now. A bunch of others from around that time just got approved." I am fully aware that we're all at the mercy of ATF bureaucracy, and wait times can be arbitrarily long (I remember how things were 20+ years ago), but after talking with a few dealers and reading all of this here, something doesn't seem right.

Myself and Autogun both got refunds. We were sick of waiting and caught them in several lies along the way.

If you paid by credit card, you typically have a max of 6 months to dispute the charge, so keep that in mind.

I recently transferred out a few F4s to dealers across the country. Of the four I did, three of them were under 2 months.

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I have done three form 4’s to my license from individuals this year. All three took almost exactly 30 days from when the check was cashed. And one of them was from the son of the owner who had been dead for 10 years, no will, no estate, gun still in deceased fathers name. 

Am i lucky? Or are you getting the run around from the dealer……

I just submitted two more two weeks ago. I need to ask the boss if the checks have cleared yet. I will update. 

Edited by Jtm35a2
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I also had one pending from Oct/Nov with MWT.  I received an email today that it was showing in their inventory and they are just waiting for the Form 4 to show up to their customer.  I’ve done several transactions with MWT and never had a problem.  In fact, they are probably one of the best organizations/people to deal with in the NFA world.  A perfect example is that two of the people in this thread got refunds it sounds like.  Who does that?!?!  I really consider my last transfer to be not a problem with MWT but with the NFA branch dragging their feet on this one(mine) off transfer.. Not to bash the branch as a whole so much because I’m loving these 30 and 45 day turn around on eform 4 approvals lately..

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Hey guys...Mike here from MWT...Just seeing this thread now...appreciate all you guys and your thoughts.   Just wanted to take a second and address it...this is kind of lengthy, but just wanted to respond.  We hate the delays on getting these guns to our customers, and we know it makes us look bad when there are delays.  We pride ourselves in our customer service.  Hopefully, when you've talked to either me OR Chris, you have been treated well and with care.  Do we make mistakes? Of course...and we strive to improve every day.  So before we get to ATF stuff, I want to take accountability for our mistakes that could cause delays.  Because some of those are on us, for sure.  When those do happen, we own up to them with our customers and try to make it right the best we can.

The short answer on delays is, every single day, ATF is a crap shoot as to what you're going to get.  With all the Transfers we do each month, we get to see it all.  And it seems to be different nuances and different interpretations depending on what payment processor you get and depending on what examiner you get.

But I want to ensure everyone that we send batches of submissions in EVERY Friday...so there are no delays once WE buy something OR once something brokered has been purchased (meaning paperwork doesn't get submitted on Brokered items until they are actually purchased).

Form 4's from Individual to Dealer are always a fun issue.   When I started with MWT 10 years ago, form 4's were taking the same time as a form 4 from Dealer to Individual, 8-12 months.  So things are better.   We always try to gauge ATF wait time averages when we talk to people.  But it is impossible to predict ATF from day to day.

But I can promise you, we submit in a timely manner and do everything in OUR power to expedite the process.  Of course, we are dependant on individual sellers and their timeliness as well...but the are more often than not very proactive with the process.  

I have personally met with ATF 5 times in person over the years...once even in Washington D.C. in a hotel room with 5 of tyhe top ATF brass and 30 ATF lawyers (literally 30).  We were discussing how ATF can better serve us the Class 3 dealer.  I have genuinely felt that ATF had legitimate concern as to improving the process.

Unfortunately, none of our concerns or suggestions have ever been implemented.

AND...as of late, we are seeing even MORE issues with ATF AND the USPS, which they use for mailing.

-As you probably know, Form 4 Submissions first go all the way to Oregon for payment processing...then they mail the form 4's ALL the way to West Virginia to get to an examiners desk.  Which is entirely inefficient.  

-KLet's start with what ATF calls "The Bank" in Oregon:  We are having submissions to Oregon sent back lately because NOW they are stipulating that only ONE Form 4 Submission can be done PER Payment form...which has never been the case before.  Meaning, we would have a collection of 6 form 4's from ONE seller, and do ONE payment form for $1,200.  Easy, right? NOW they are telling us that we can only do ONE payment form PER form 4.  So instead of ONE transaction for $1,200, they are choosing to do 6 separate transactions for $200 each.  Makes sense for the government.

-We have even had THREE payment submissions kicked back to us  this month BECAUSE WE DIDN'T CHECK MARK "VISA" AS THE PAYMENT METHOD. Which, of course, causes delays.  Again, never been an issue before.

-WE have also had delays with the Bank, especially on Estate deals, where we send in (for example) 10 submissions from the estate with ONE set of documentation from the estate (Copy of will, death certificate, power of attorney docs, affadavits from beneficiaries, etc....sometimes this is almos a whole ream of paper) and the BANK will SEPARATE THE FORMS FROM THE ONE ESTATE AND DIVIDE IT BETWEEN MULTIPLE EXAMINERS. Which makes zero sense.  Plus, that REAM of documents we included gets sent to only ONE of those examiners, leaving the other 2-3 examiners to USPS an error letter to the Individual seller saying they need a whole nother REAM of documentation mailed in.  I CANNOT TELL YOU HOW MANY TIMES THIS HAPPENS. 

Once things leave the bank to the examiners in West Virginia, va USPS, which takes forever, then we get more issues from that side.  More and More examiners are "error" lettering submissions in order to get clarification on everything from "Model" name to "overall length/Barrel Length" confirmation/corrections to Serial Number Adjustments/confirmation.  Again, this gets USPS'ed out to the individual seller to provide photographic proof of measurments and corrections made on the form.This is happening more than ever before. (ATF is going all the way back to the original submission made on a particular Serial Number

As I've told ATF personally countless times, the form 4 FROM INDIVIDUAL TO FFL/SOT should be the absolute fastest form approval there is.  The fact that individuals are getting THEIR form 4's faster than form 4's Individual-dealer is really backwards.  

We've often thought about WAITING till everything is officially here at MWT and ready to go on Efile, but we have so many people looking for things that the second we know we have something coming in, buyers want to lock them up.  So we sell them as "incoming" guns and, since there is still movement on them before they can be transferred, we accept 50% of funds up front only. 

And we totally agree and we get it: the wait times suck...BUT...overall, especially with the new efile system with Kiosk sellers, the system is way better than it was when I started.

 

 

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2 hours ago, Frank from MWT Joplin MO said:

WE have also had delays with the Bank, especially on Estate deals, where we send in (for example) 10 submissions from the estate with ONE set of documentation from the estate (Copy of will, death certificate, power of attorney docs, affadavits from beneficiaries, etc....sometimes this is almos a whole ream of paper) and the BANK will SEPARATE THE FORMS FROM THE ONE ESTATE AND DIVIDE IT BETWEEN MULTIPLE EXAMINERS. Which makes zero sense.  Plus, that REAM of documents we included gets sent to only ONE of those examiners, leaving the other 2-3 examiners to USPS an error letter to the Individual seller saying they need a whole nother REAM of documentation mailed in.  I CANNOT TELL YOU HOW MANY TIMES THIS HAPPENS.

This is especially interesting to me, as estate transfers is what kick-started me into getting my FFL & SOT.   So far, every estate transfer that I've handled has only involved one firearm in each estate, but I may have one coming up where the testator has five transferables.  Will take your experience to heart and send in each form 4 or form 5 with it's own set of estate documents when I get multiples.

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7 minutes ago, Uncle Zeek said:

This is especially interesting to me, as estate transfers is what kick-started me into getting my FFL & SOT.   So far, every estate transfer that I've handled has only involved one firearm in each estate, but I may have one coming up where the testator has five transferables.  Will take your experience to heart and send in each form 4 or form 5 with it's own set of estate documents when I get multiples.

It's a pain in the butt and a massive waste of paper, but if you want to have zero delays, that is probably the way to go, I'm afraid.

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1 hour ago, United Surplus Arms said:

Thanks Mike for taking the time to explain.

As I have said before, I have done lots of deals with MWT and they have always been above board.

When there was an issue (rare), they made it right.

- Jeff

Thank YOU, Jeff...again, we pride ourselves on taking care of our customers, like you....we are SO blessed to be able to work with and to know as friends all the people we get to work with.  Class 3 people are the BEST people...everything that makes this Country so great.

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I have been a customer of yours in the past and  spoken to many of your customer over the years about the overall wait times to get guns to their local in-State dealers. 

Ironically I was actually talking to one of your less than pleased customers yesterday who is waiting on an "extended" time period Form 4 approval to MWT.

In that discussion yesterday I listed many of these issues you described above that are outside of your control. I mentioned that many of these are probably estate guns, I bet there are correction letters because models and lengths are all messed up from the last transfer in 1989, and you have old people and non-gun people on the other end of the transfer trying to deal with this.   Your "seller" is statistically probably an 80 year old widow whose husband is now deceased and she may be dealing with a bunch of different estate issues,  not to mention the loss of her husband, and getting a scary looking correction letter from the ATF, demanding her get the gun out and take pictures with a ruler using her jitterbug phone and its just is a mess to deal with.  USPS loses stuff both inbound and outbound. Form 4s get misplaced tucked inside a paper TV Guide she still receives in the mail and isn't found until she is looking up when that Matlock rerun comes on, etc.

However, I can offer some advice in your business model that may help here based off my personal experience as well as that of others I personally know who have bought dozens of guns from you all over the year.

You need to be more transparent with your buyers on the time these paper Individual Seller to MWT Form 4 transfers take and the overall time it takes to get to the gun to their dealer.

Telling buyers that Form 4s come back in "30 to 45 days", or that is should be here "soon" or "any day now", etc. just misleads them and makes them angry and come post here when it doesn't happen that way.

Sure maybe some of them do come back in a month.....but not all of them.    Some of these paper F4s to dealers take 6 months or more just to be approved. 

 On top of that, just because the Form 4 is approved doesn't mean that the seller magically get the approved paper form Form 4 in the mail that day and ships the gun to you pronto.  Quite often, it takes up to another month for the approved paper Form 4 to be delivered to the seller and they then have to pack up and ship you the gun.   God help you if that paper Form 4 is lost in the mail...as now you are waiting 45 days before the ATF will even accept a certified copy request and then its another month once a certified copy request is submitted and gets  back to the seller.  In that scenario  you could have two months or more just waiting to get a copy of the Form 4 for the seller so  they can ship the gun. That's on top of the 6 months the Form 4 approval potentially took. 

The buddy I talked to yesterday about his extended wait time, I told him once MWT asks for the balance payment (once it shows up in MWTs eForms inventory) set your expectations on 2ish month before the gun gets to your dealer.  The seller is going to have to wait for the paper Form 4 to arrive (up to 30 day), pack and ship the gun (another week or more), MWT will have to intake the gun and then repack it and reship it to his dealer (say another week or so).  If it all goes swimmingly its maybe 4 weeks to arrive your dealer.  Shit goes sideways and USPS loses the approved Form 4... or some other delay than plan on a couple months or more after you pay the balance.

You need to give sellers a date the Form 4 went pending with the ATF (meaning it cleared the Oregon bank PO box hurdles) and be very clear that these are paper transactions, that use USPS as the carrier pigeon, and the person on the other end of this transaction may be an 80 year old widow who doesn't know a tape measure from a hammer or an estate attorney who know nothing about machineguns and are slow to mitigate problems that may crop up.   Due to all these factor these Form 4 transfers to  MWT can potentially take upwards of 9 months to complete and get the gun to their dealer.

When people ask me how long does a Form 4 to a dealer take time wise I tell them on average plan for 2 to 9 months in most cases and some small percentage fall outside that range.  (a buddy of mine just had one take almost two years with corrections)

I know you all are trying to be "efficient" with some of your strategy here but the government doesn't work that way.  This is the same government that processes  former employee separation papers in an underground mine using reams of paper, wheeled carts and a single elevator to move it all around.

Sending in a single payment for multiple transfers is asking for problems.  Sending in one set of estate docs for multiple transactions is again asking for problems.   Limit the unforced errors on your side even if it means killing a bunch of trees in the process.

Its the same deal when I submit 5320.20s for temp moves to a shoot out of State.  Sure you can put multiple guns on one form.  You know what happens if you do that and they don't like the model name for one gun....all three get disapproved.  I always put one gun on one 5320.20.  Same with fingerprint cards , checks for tax payments, trust or supporting docs.  Can you get away with sending in a single set...sure .sometimes it all goes to plan with one set of docs, payments, etc.  What limits the odds of failure, sending in each application to stand on its own merits.  I send every application in its own envelope or separate email to NFAFax to maximize my odds because postage and emails are cheap and government employees including the postal service are not great.

 Again if you are running a business and don't want complaints here about extended wait times put the odds in your favor.  Every application you submit needs to stand on its own so when some government employee in WV. or OR.  splits up the applications  everything else in that batch doesn't end up denied because you were trying to be efficient.

I am not posting this to beat you all up and I actually recommend folks buy guns from MWT.  However that recommendations always comes with the caveat about the realistic time its going to take for an "incoming" gun they buy to actually get to their dealer.  This is especially critical in the days of 24 hour eForm 4 approvals and folks who don't understand the time difference a paper Form 4  takes.

Just my two cents anyway.

Edited by jbntex
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On 5/2/2025 at 3:27 PM, jbntex said:

I have been a customer of yours in the past and  spoken to many of your customer over the years about the overall wait times to get guns to their local in-State dealers. 

Ironically I was actually talking to one of your less than pleased customers yesterday who is waiting on an "extended" time period Form 4 approval to MWT.

In that discussion yesterday I listed many of these issues you described above that are outside of your control. I mentioned that many of these are probably estate guns, I bet there are correction letters because models and lengths are all messed up from the last transfer in 1989, and you have old people and non-gun people on the other end of the transfer trying to deal with this.   Your "seller" is statistically probably an 80 year old widow whose husband is now deceased and she may be dealing with a bunch of different estate issues,  not to mention the loss of her husband, and getting a scary looking correction letter from the ATF, demanding her get the gun out and take pictures with a ruler using her jitterbug phone and its just is a mess to deal with.  USPS loses stuff both inbound and outbound. Form 4s get misplaced tucked inside a paper TV Guide she still receives in the mail and isn't found until she is looking up when that Matlock rerun comes on, etc.

However, I can offer some advice in your business model that may help here based off my personal experience as well as that of others I personally know who have bought dozens of guns from you all over the year.

You need to be more transparent with your buyers on the time these paper Individual Seller to MWT Form 4 transfers take and the overall time it takes to get to the gun to their dealer.

Telling buyers that Form 4s come back in "30 to 45 days", or that is should be here "soon" or "any day now", etc. just misleads them and makes them angry and come post here when it doesn't happen that way.

Sure maybe some of them do come back in a month.....but not all of them.    Some of these paper F4s to dealers take 6 months or more just to be approved. 

 On top of that, just because the Form 4 is approved doesn't mean that the seller magically get the approved paper form Form 4 in the mail that day and ships the gun to you pronto.  Quite often, it takes up to another month for the approved paper Form 4 to be delivered to the seller and they then have to pack up and ship you the gun.   God help you if that paper Form 4 is lost in the mail...as now you are waiting 45 days before the ATF will even accept a certified copy request and then its another month once a certified copy request is submitted and gets  back to the seller.  In that scenario  you could have two months or more just waiting to get a copy of the Form 4 for the seller so  they can ship the gun. That's on top of the 6 months the Form 4 approval potentially took. 

The buddy I talked to yesterday about his extended wait time, I told him once MWT asks for the balance payment (once it shows up in MWTs eForms inventory) set your expectations on 2ish month before the gun gets to your dealer.  The seller is going to have to wait for the paper Form 4 to arrive (up to 30 day), pack and ship the gun (another week or more), MWT will have to intake the gun and then repack it and reship it to his dealer (say another week or so).  If it all goes swimmingly its maybe 4 weeks to arrive your dealer.  Shit goes sideways and USPS loses the approved Form 4... or some other delay than plan on a couple months or more after you pay the balance.

You need to give sellers a date the Form 4 went pending with the ATF (meaning it cleared the Oregon bank PO box hurdles) and be very clear that these are paper transactions, that use USPS as the carrier pigeon, and the person on the other end of this transaction may be an 80 year old widow who doesn't know a tape measure from a hammer or an estate attorney who know nothing about machineguns and are slow to mitigate problems that may crop up.   Due to all these factor these Form 4 transfers to  MWT can potentially take upwards of 9 months to complete and get the gun to their dealer.

When people ask me how long does a Form 4 to a dealer take time wise I tell them on average plan for 2 to 9 months in most cases and some small percentage fall outside that range.  (a buddy of mine just had one take almost two years with corrections)

I know you all are trying to be "efficient" with some of your strategy here but the government doesn't work that way.  This is the same government that processes  former employee separation papers in an underground mine using reams of paper, wheeled carts and a single elevator to move it all around.

Sending in a single payment for multiple transfers is asking for problems.  Sending in one set of estate docs for multiple transactions is again asking for problems.   Limit the unforced errors on your side even if it means killing a bunch of trees in the process.

Its the same deal when I submit 5320.20s for temp moves to a shoot out of State.  Sure you can put multiple guns on one form.  You know what happens if you do that and they don't like the model name for one gun....all three get disapproved.  I always put one gun on one 5320.20.  Same with fingerprint cards , checks for tax payments, trust or supporting docs.  Can you get away with sending in a single set...sure .sometimes it all goes to plan with one set of docs, payments, etc.  What limits the odds of failure, sending in each application to stand on its own merits.  I send every application in its own envelope or separate email to NFAFax to maximize my odds because postage and emails are cheap and government employees including the postal service are not great.

 Again if you are running a business and don't want complaints here about extended wait times put the odds in your favor.  Every application you submit needs to stand on its own so when some government employee in WV. or OR.  splits up the applications  everything else in that batch doesn't end up denied because you were trying to be efficient.

I am not posting this to beat you all up and I actually recommend folks buy guns from MWT.  However that recommendations always comes with the caveat about the realistic time its going to take for an "incoming" gun they buy to actually get to their dealer.  This is especially critical in the days of 24 hour eForm 4 approvals and folks who don't understand the time difference a paper Form 4  takes.

Just my two cents anyway.

All good points...I think we need to do better at the "Under Promising-Over delivering" part of this, for sure...thank you

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Over the years, I’ve had many positive experiences with MWT. I trust them 100%. I would imagine the transfer paperwork waiting game isn’t really something they can control or influence at all. That feels like a random variable with all NFA transfers I've done across the board. What matters far more to me is the peace of mind I feel doing business with MWT. I'm sure that whatever you're getting is worth the wait. Hang in there and stock up on ammo and accessories in the meantime.

Edited by hkfl
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I have a gun in incoming from a form 4 as well with MWT. I have purchased a gun or two from them before without issues. For this one I was given the "30-45" days quote that others have mentioned as well.

 

I believe that @jbntex hit the nail on the head. I don't mind waiting, I've waited 18 months for transfers before. But when I think it's coming that quickly and I don't hear anything, that's when I get anxious.

 

Really looking forward to my grail gun when the transfer comes through!

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