By JD, Owner/Janitor
Quick disclaimer before anything else: I’m not a lawyer, and nothing below is legal advice. This is a general education piece on how gun trusts get used for NFA purchases and where we fit into that process. If you’re actually setting one up, talk to an attorney who handles trusts in your state. We’ll gladly work with whatever document your attorney gives us — we just can’t write it for you.
We sell NFA items — suppressors and short-barreled rifles mostly, sometimes other Class 3 pieces — and probably once a week someone at the counter asks whether they should “get a trust” before they buy one. It’s a fair question and there’s no one-size answer, but here’s the general shape of it so you’re not walking in blind.
What NFA items actually are
The National Firearms Act of 1934 put a separate, tighter federal process around a specific category of items: suppressors, short-barreled rifles (SBRs) and shotguns (SBS), machine guns, “any other weapons,” and destructive devices. People shorthand this as “Class 3” or “NFA items.” Each one requires its own ATF-approved transfer or making application and its own registration to a specific legal owner before you can take possession. That owner can be a person, or it can be a legal entity — including a trust. As of a January 1, 2026 federal tax law change, the tax stamp itself is $0 for suppressors, SBRs, SBSs, and AOWs — the $200 tax stamp now applies only to machine guns and destructive devices.
What a gun trust is, in plain terms
A gun trust — sometimes called an NFA trust — is a legal entity set up specifically to own NFA items, the same general idea as a revocable living trust used for estate planning, just written for this purpose. Instead of you personally being the registered owner of a suppressor or SBR, the trust owns it, and the trust document names who’s allowed to possess and use it on the trust’s behalf — usually called trustees. The document itself is drafted by an attorney, not by us, and not by a generic online template if you want it to actually hold up. This is exactly the kind of document where a bad template causes real problems years later, so it’s worth paying someone who does this for a living to get it right.
Why people bother with one
A few reasons come up over and over:
- The CLEO signoff issue that used to exist. Individual NFA applications used to require an actual sign-off from a local Chief Law Enforcement Officer, who could simply refuse to sign and stall your application indefinitely. Trusts were a common workaround, since the trust application didn’t require that same signature. A 2016 federal rule change (41F) replaced the CLEO signoff with a notification requirement for everyone — individuals and trusts alike — so this particular advantage is smaller than it used to be. It’s still worth asking your attorney whether anything in this area has shifted again by the time you set one up, since it’s the kind of detail that moves.
- Photos and fingerprints. This used to be an individual-applicant-only requirement that trusts were exempt from. The same 2016 rule extended photo and fingerprint submission to a trust’s “responsible persons” as well, so this gap has largely closed too. Ask your attorney what currently applies to your specific trust structure — don’t assume the old rules still hold.
- More than one person can lawfully possess the item — this one’s still real. If an item is registered to you individually, only you can legally possess it — handing it to your spouse or a friend to shoot, even at the same range, can cross a legal line. Name multiple people as trustees on a trust, and each of them can lawfully possess the trust’s NFA items without a separate transfer for each person.
- Estate and succession planning. A trust can spell out what happens to NFA items after the original owner dies, which is a big part of why people still set them up even with the CLEO and fingerprint gaps mostly closed.
None of this makes a trust required, and plenty of people buy NFA items as individuals with no trust at all. It’s a convenience and structure decision, not a legal necessity — and the tradeoffs (attorney cost up front, keeping the trust document updated if you add trustees or items, and the fact that some of the old advantages have narrowed since 2016) are worth weighing with whoever drafts it for you. This is a fast-moving area of federal regulation, so treat anything here as a starting point for that conversation, not the final word.
The general process and timeline
Once you have a trust document, buying an NFA item through it generally looks like this:
- You pick the item and pay for it, same as any other purchase.
- We file ATF Form 4 on the transfer, listing the trust as the transferee. For the suppressors and SBRs we handle most often, the tax stamp itself is $0 as of January 1, 2026 — the $200 stamp rate now applies only to machine guns and destructive devices.
- The application sits with the ATF for review. This is the part nobody can speed up — approval times move around, but recent history has routinely run several months, sometimes longer. It’s federal processing time, not something we or your attorney control.
- Once approved, the tax stamp comes back and the item is legally registered to the trust. Only then can you take possession.
- You come pick it up, we verify the paperwork, and you’re done.
Bring your trust paperwork with you when you place the order — we’ll walk through exactly what we need from it before we file anything.
Where Redland Rifle fits in
We sell NFA items and handle these transfers in-house — we’re not brokering it out to somebody else. Our transfer fee for NFA items is $75 (compared to $50 for a standard firearm transfer), which covers our part of the paperwork, the bound book entry, secure storage while your Form 4 is pending, and coordinating with the ATF on the transfer itself. That fee is separate from the federal tax stamp, which goes to the ATF, not to us — as of January 1, 2026, that federal tax is $0 for suppressors, SBRs, SBSs, and AOWs, and stays $200 only for machine guns and destructive devices. See our FFL Transfer Walkthrough for how a standard transfer works, and our FFL Policy page for our full dealer policy.
If you’re weighing whether a trust makes sense for your situation, that’s a conversation worth having with an attorney before you buy, not after. We’re happy to answer questions about our side of the process — the transfer, the fee, the timeline — any time you call or stop by. Just don’t take our word for it on the legal structure itself; that’s not our lane, and it shouldn’t be.
Redland Rifle Co, 4755 US-280, Birmingham, AL 35242. (205) 797-1911, transfers@redlandrifle.com.