Glossary

Cohort

People who filed around the same time as you.

Frontier (Operational Frontier)

The oldest filing months still getting approvals — how far back the ATF is currently working.

Active Cohorts

How many different filing months saw at least one approval in the last 30 days.

Median Wait

The middle wait — half were faster, half slower (used instead of an average so one extreme case doesn't skew it).

Typical Range (IQR)

The middle half of waits — the fastest 25% and the slowest 25% are left out. Also called the IQR, or interquartile range.

Slowest 10% (P90)

The slow-tail marker — 9 out of 10 approvals came back faster than this. Not a prediction, just where the slow end starts.

Regime

The queue's current pattern of behavior.

Compression

Wait times bunching closer together.

Spread Trend

Whether the typical range is narrowing or widening — a change in how spread out waits are, not a change in how long they are.

Dispersion

How spread out the wait times are.

Density

How concentrated approvals are in a given period.

Volatility

How much the wait times are bouncing around.

Consistency

How much a lane's waits vary around its own median. A lane can be slow but consistent, or fast but erratic — this is not a speed rating.

Divergence

The widening of operational differences between filing contexts — when lanes process cohorts at meaningfully different rates.

Convergence

A narrowing of operational differences between filing contexts — lanes moving toward more similar processing conditions.

Fragmentation

Internally inconsistent processing behavior where different cohort segments advance at materially different rates.

Trajectory

The directional momentum of approval velocity: accelerating, flat, or slowing.

Breadth

How widely a condition extends across filing structures — whether it is isolated to one lane or system-wide.

NFA Watch is community-run and unaffiliated with the ATF or U.S. government. Data reflects community-reported approvals only.