Federal gun regulators on Thursday introduced a series of proposed changes to one of the most commonly used National Firearms Act forms. 

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, on Oct. 30, is set to publish a six-page proposed rule change to ATF Form 5320.1, commonly known as the Form 1, which is the "Application to Make and Register a Firearm." In other words, when an FFL SOT wants to make, say, a machine gun or short-barreled rifle, they fill out a Form 1. The same form is used by consumers who want to make their own NFA item, such as an SBR, short-barreled shotgun, or suppressor. 

Among the proposed changes is a clarification that the $200 making tax for everything except a machine gun or destructive device is zeroed out. Other changes include changing the photo box to accept a photo of an ID, such as a driver's license, rather than requiring a 2x2 passport photo, "combining race/ethnicity items," accepting various types of digital signatures, and removing the CLEO notification requirement.

The CLEO, or Chief Law Enforcement Officer notification is a relic from the 1930s and is generally seen by many Form 1 users – and some local LE offices themselves – as unneeded. The ATF clarified that the removal comes after comments during an information period, in which concerns were raised that CLEOs could be "inadvertently creating a firearms registry in their office due to these forms."

According to the latest statistics from the ATF, in 2023 alone, some 284,533 Form 1s were processed by the agency. 

The proposed rule change will be open for comments for 30 days in the Federal Register. 

As far as moving for a similar rule change on Form 4s, used to transfer items such as suppressors, that remains to be seen. Some 471,239 Form 4s were processed by ATF's NFA Branch in 2023, a more than eight-fold increase from the 57,294 processed in 2013.