How to Have Fun Filling Out the ATF Form 1

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The rules governing short-barreled weapons were codified in the 1934 National Firearms Act. This abominable piece of unconstitutional excrement was passed at the apogee of the motorized bandit. Psychopaths like John Dillinger, Homer Van Meter, Baby Face Nelson, Al Capone, and Clyde Barrow dominated the newsreels. Then as now, legislators desperate to weaponize a crisis passed the nation’s first federal gun control regulations. The fallout persists to this day.

The 1934 NFA defined and regulated such stuff as automatic weapons, sound suppressors, short-barreled guns, and destructive devices like hand grenades and mortars. Back then, congressmen actually studied the document they were supposed to support and defend, so they rightly appreciated that they were not granted the power to outright ban anything. As a result, they decided to tax these items out of existence using the congressional power to levy revenue. They settled on a $200 transfer tax on scary stuff that shoots. 

Nowadays, $200 is dinner and movie with the kids and a few friends. In 1934, $200 was closer to $4,800 in today’s money. The 1934 NFA worked like a champ. At a time when nobody had any cash anyway, commerce in these weapons fell to nothing. However, there were some fascinating details.

The Devil is in the Details

Silencers are intrinsically harmless. I suppose you could beat somebody with one, but I’d sooner have a proper bat. I have read that sound suppressors were included in the NFA because land owners were concerned that poor hungry people might use them to poach game to feed their families. 91 years later, we’re still stuck.

Similarly, the regulatory dicta regarding short-barreled weapons never should have come into law. The legal barrel limit on a rifle is 16 inches. A shotgun is 18 inches. It is pretty ridiculous that you can walk out of a gun shop with a pocket pistol cash and carry, but have to file a bunch of forms, pay a $200 transfer tax, and wait to install a 14.5-inch GI barrel on your favorite semiauto M4.

Supposedly, the original draft of the NFA included handguns as well. Should handguns be regulated with the $200 transfer tax, folks would obviously just cut the barrels down on their rifles and shotguns. That’s where the barrel limits came from. The handgun bit purportedly got removed to get the legislation passed, but nobody thought to excise the barrel length restrictions. That would all be kind of funny, except that Randy Weaver’s wife and 14-year-old son were shot to death back in 1992 by federal agents over what was purportedly less than an inch on a shotgun barrel.

This is Just Crazy

American gun laws are a bucket of snakes. In no place was that more gloriously on display than in the evolution of the pistol stabilizing brace (PSB). The original PSB was designed to allow disabled veterans to fire big-boned handguns more safely. That’s something everybody should get behind. However, PSBs inevitably came to be used to create ad hoc short-barreled rifles. 

The rules governing short-barreled rifles and shotguns in America are asinine. Anything that might help push back against that was and is a good thing. However, the poor folks at BATF tasked with deciphering that snake bucket found themselves in a pickle.

BATF manages these things via individual policy letters. I have requested one or two myself and found them to be have been well-reasoned, sincere, and thoroughly foot-noted. However, the problem is that they don’t matter. The road to hell is paved with companies that came up with some awesome new product, secured a BATF approval letter, and then were summarily put out of business when BATF later changed its mind and demanded a recall.  

There was actually a time when the official position was that having the PSB in place was fine, but placing the gun to your shoulder was a felony. You could, legit, go to the range, fire the weapon legally from the hip, then loose a few rounds from the shoulder and become a felon. Things were eventually made right, but that was just nuts.

It’s a Brave New World

With all that as foundation, everything changes on 1 January 2026. We’ve all been reading about it. The changes arise from the budget reconciliation bill (aka the “One Big Beautiful Bill”) very narrowly passed in congress and signed by President Trump. The original verbiage removed sound suppressors, short-barreled weapons, and Any Other Weapons (AOW’s) from the purview of the NFA. AOW’s are anything that makes Uncle Sam itch but doesn’t fall into any handy category. Think handguns with vertical foregrips, pen guns, guns that look like canes and umbrellas--stuff like that.

Tragically, a keystroke by the Senate Parliamentarian, a purportedly non-partisan bureaucrat tasked with determining whether stuff in budget bills is actually budget-related, administratively removed that deregulation language. This was utterly wrong on Constitutional grounds, but we were helpless to influence it. However, a backup plan retained the regulatory scheme but reset the transfer taxes for everything but machineguns and destructive devices to zero. That change finally kicks in on the first of the year. I’m stoked.

Tinfoil Hats

Most serious gun nerds, myself included, were still pretty disappointed. I’m 59 years old, and this was the first time in my lifetime we seriously pushed back against federal gun control laws. I will most likely die of natural causes before anything else ever gets repealed. However, doing away with that horrible transfer tax ain’t nothing. Many folks are reticent to participate in the registration process for fear of getting on some government list. I’ve got bad news for you, guys. If you have a driver’s license and own a cell phone, Uncle Sam already knows absolutely everything there is to know about you already.

You think I’m kidding? License plate readers track where you drive. Government agencies surveil the money you keep in the bank. It’s a simple thing for them to monitor your cell phone location and probably listen in on your texts and calls. My secret is to be so mind-numbingly boring that Uncle Sam won’t care. The aforementioned political screed is about as fulminant as I get. I drive conservatively, avoid drugs and alcohol, and do not cheat on my taxes. Being tedious is my superpower.

So, What Does All This REALLY Mean?

As of the New Year, you will be able to file a BATF Form 1 and legally shorten the barrel on anything you own without paying the blasted transfer tax. You could build suppressors at home as well, but that takes some skill and tooling. Pruning barrels is typically just plug and play.

The process is a pain, I’ll grant you that. Securing a digital copy of your fingerprints is the biggest hassle. Some but not all UPS stores will do this for you for a fee. There are companies online that will let you make a set of prints at home, mail them in, and return you a digital file. The weird digital file format is not something normal people can manage for themselves. The up side is that, once you have that file in-hand, you never have to do it again. Google is your buddy for the details.

The BATF e-Forms site was state of the art about 15 years ago. It is pretty antiquated now. However, I can make it work. So can you. Start at www.eforms.atf.gov and sign up for an account. Once you are in the system, you can file as many as you want. Turnaround is currently quick. After a zillion folks drop these things on 1 January, however, it will undoubtedly bog down. The time to get started is now. You can source the details online.

Opportunities

I already did this back during the Biden pistol brace amnesty. Never mind the details. It’s essentially the same thing that will happen in 2026. I was amazed at how much fun I could have with free Form 1’s. You’ll want to start with an AR receiver. Different calibers, sundry barrel lengths, assorted buttstocks…just go wild. AK pistols are similarly good grist. Uzis, HK clones, the Palmetto State Armory JAKL 9 carbine, the CZ Skorpion—all that stuff is just itching for a proper buttstock.

Carbine conversions for Glocks and SIGs are on the menu. A Form 1 will let you put a buttstock on your Mossberg Shockwave or the myriad equivalent stubby shotguns offered by other companies. I have built several butt-kicking short-barreled shotguns at home using cheap used hosts simply by cutting the barrels down with a cutoff wheel on a table saw. You must engrave your making information on the receiver. The best way to do that is to find a friend with a laser engraver. However, I have done several at my local trophy shop. They never charged much.

This really is the first fresh firearms freedom I have experienced in my lifetime. The removal of the transfer tax will also open up an exciting new market in used sound suppressors. Prior to this time, nobody was willing to drop a $200 transfer tax on a pre-owned can. Getting into a sound suppressor is about to get way cheaper. I personally plan to be poised over my laptop on 1 January ready to go. I’m gathering the details now. I’ll see you there.

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