Over at The Truth About Guns, Nick Leghorn updates readers on ATF staffing and NFA wait times, and the picture is not pretty. He notes that wait times have gone from seven months for applications submitted early this year to an anticipated fifteen months for applications submitted today. Ballooning application numbers have swamped ATF’s NFA Branch, and that means longer turnaround times for those tax stamps.

According to Nick, there will be nearly twenty new hires brought in to deal with the mountain of paperwork that is accumulating out there in West Virginia. But he points out that this will take some time to make a difference in wait times, so don’t get your hopes up on seeing your recent purchases any time soon.

The new examiners will definitely add more bandwidth to the system and allow them to process a higher volume of the 60,000+ applications that are piled up, but they will be inexperienced and therefore it will take some time for them to be trained and “ramp up” to meet the demand.

According to a reader at The Firearm Blog, the eForms system isn’t the only part of ATF’s NFA branch that has ground to a halt during the government shutdown.

I called [the BATFE] today and Vicky (a pleasant sounding lady who answered the phone) said they have been affected by the government shutdown.  Staff furloughed, no applications are being processed, nor can they check status.  My Form 4 was sent in Feb 2013, so who knows when I’ll see it.

If you weren’t planning to spring for delivery confirmation for your application submissions before, now would be a good time to reconsider, especially if you are using a trust or business entity to register NFA firearms and trying to get applications in before the proposed regulations can take effect.