The Lab
Studies from the queue
Field notes from watching the ATF’s NFA approval queue with instruments. Each study is one plain-English finding backed by a chart computed live from community-reported approvals. Numbers move as new approvals are reported — this is observed community data, not official ATF records.
One chart holds the whole queue: four lanes, four different physics.
Each dot is one approval. Dotted diagonals mark constant waits — every dot on the 60d line waited exactly 60 days. Showing the 2,500 most recent of 3,998 approvals.
Method. Every reported e-file approval from roughly the last 10 months, plotted by filing date against approval date and colored by lane. Diagonal guides mark constant waits.
Reading it honestly. The shaded strip on the right holds the most recent filings. Most are still waiting, so only their fastest approvals appear yet — the empty space there is pending, not fast.
It isn't one line. It's four, and they run at wildly different speeds.
shared wait-days axis · same scale across all four lanes
Method. last 90 days · e-file only. Each dot is one approval on a shared wait-days axis; the shaded band is the middle 50%, the heavy tick is the median. Lanes below 15 approvals are held back.
Form 1 spent five months getting slower. Both of its lanes have since turned around, the individual one first.
The Form 1 · Individual median has swung between 5 and 69 days since Mar 2026 without settling into a direction.
The Form 1 · Trust median climbed to 83 days by Jul 2026 and has since come down to 30 in Aug 2026.
Method. median wait by approval month · ≥8 approvals/month · e-file only. Slip velocity is the ordinary-least-squares slope of the last six complete monthly medians.
Reading it honestly. This is the approval-month view — what the ATF cleared each month, the output side of the pipe. It is distinct from the filing-cohort curves in Study 06.
The line is fair: whoever filed first is approved first, almost without exception.
The queue is almost perfectly first-in, first-out. Among filings placed at least 14 days apart, the later filer almost never gets approved first — jumping the line essentially doesn’t happen.
Method. last 180 days · e-file only. For each lane we compare every pair of approvals filed at least 14 days apart and count how often the later filer was approved first. Lanes with fewer than 50 comparable pairs are held back.
Form 1 approvals arrive seven days a week. Form 4s take the weekend off.
Share of approvals by weekday
last 180 days · all reported approvals. Saturday and Sunday columns are dashed.
Daily reported approvals
Method. Weekday shares and daily counts of all reported approvals. Reporting is community-sourced, so a batch of reports can smear activity across a few days.
Watch the wall move: each filing month clears later than the one before it.
Method. Each line is one filing-month cohort — the share of its reported approvals cleared by day X. Cohorts need at least 25 approvals to appear.
Reading it honestly. Solid lines are mature cohorts (filed more than 150 days ago, essentially complete). Dashed lines are still maturing and are drawn only to their current age — they can only shift right as slower approvals land. Note this is the filing-cohort view, and it lags: Form 1 · Trust approvals turned back down in Jul 2026 (Study 03), but those filings are still maturing here and cannot move these curves yet.
The Form 1 queue stopped working its oldest filings and started working the newest ones.
Tap or hover a week to see which filing months it cleared.
Method. last 11 complete approval weeks · e-file only. Each bar is one complete approval week, stacked by the month the filing was placed, oldest filing month at the bottom.
Reading it honestly. The in-progress week is dropped entirely. The most recent complete week (Aug 23) is still filling as reports arrive, so its bar will grow.
Your state doesn't change your wait.
Every state with enough reported approvals lands in a tight cluster — just 3 days separate the fastest and slowest state medians. NFA processing is federal; the state-to-state differences here are noise, not policy.
Method. Form 4 · Individual · e-file · last 180 days · states with ≥15 approvals. Each dot is a state median; the whisker is its middle 50%. The dashed line is the overall median across states.
Notes from the desk
- Movement pressure concentrated near August 2026. Localized activation — cohort compression has not yet dissipated.
- Form 4 Trust frontier trails Individual by 1 month. Persistent pathway separation — trust gap remains observable.
- Form 1 Trust processing lags Individual cohorts by 2 months. Cross-pathway gap remains present and unresolved.
The Lab · Studies may change without notice · NFA wait times this month → · Glossary →