A former ATF official reached out to me recently with a strong warning: The ATF is asking for information that could very easily be used against anyone who tries to make a homemade silencer lawfully. If you answer certain questions on a digital Form 1, you may regret it.
In other words, your own honesty could lead to you own imprisonment.
The former ATF official said on the electronic ATF Form 1, which you need to complete to make a homemade silencer, there is an electronic documentation box, which states: “Please submit the following descriptive information: Pictures of the parts that you will use to make the silencer (the pictures should be clear and allow the identification of the parts photographed). Failure to upload additional documentation could lead to the Form 1 being Disapproved.”
This, the former ATF official said, is a classic example of the ATF’s NFA Division, “not having a clue about what the law says, which they’re supposed to enforce.”
The federal definition of a silencer at 18 USC 921(a)(24) not only includes completed silencers, but also includes “any combination of parts, designed or redesigned, and intended for use in assembling or fabricating a firearm silencer or firearm muffler, and any part intended only for use in such assembly or fabrication.”
Therefore, any photos of silencer parts that someone submits to ATF can be legally seen as pictures of silencers—for which the applicant does not yet have authorization to possess.
The first time the former ATF official heard about this was a few years ago.
“It started with the solvent trap,” the former ATF official said. “People decided to purchase a solvent trap and then do a Form 1. Once ATF learned about that, they denied the registration, because the applicant’s intent was to make a silencer, but they were actually in possession of an unregistered silencer—exactly as the definition says.”
A lightbulb went on within ATF’s NFA Division, the former ATF official said, and they started asking questions of everyone who wants to make a silencer.
I asked the former ATF official what lawful applicant should put on the form. He recommended this: “I don’t have any silencer parts because that would be a felony.”
“This can only work two ways,” the former ATF official said. “Either they’re playing entrapment and they want gun owners to send them ‘evidence,’ of their own crimes, or they’re complete numbskulls at the NFA Division and they don’t realize what they’re doing.”
ATF Director Robert Cekada said the real issue is solvent traps that are made cheaply overseas, but he was quick to point out that no one will be charged for complying with a Form 1 as long as he is running the ATF.
“No will be arrested for photos. We’re trying not to register solvent traps,” he said Monday evening. “They are coming into this country illegally. We want to dissuade people from registering solvent traps, which are built overseas as suppressors without the hole, except for the part that says ‘drill here.’”
Cekada said ATF is in the process of modernizing all of its paperwork, including the Form 1.
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This story is part of the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project and is published here with their permission.