Best NFA Gun Trusts [2024]: Should you get one?

If you’re looking into purchasing an NFA Firearm, like a silencer/suppressor, short barreled rifle, and more, then you’ve likely heard about NFA Gun Trusts and might be wondering if such a firearms trust is right for you and, if so, how to set up your gun trust properly.

If that’s you, you’re in luck because we’re going to cover everything you need to know about NFA trusts, help you decide if they’re right for you, show you our favorite NFA trusts, and even give you all the background info that you never knew you wanted about the ATF and trusts.

Quick Summary: NFA Gun Trusts aren’t for everybody. However, there’s still a chance that an NFA trust is right for you depending on your situation and needs. If so, our #1 recommendation is NFA Gun Trusts

If you already generally know what an NFA trust is and you’re just looking to see if you should use one for your next NFA firearm purchase, you can continue on in this article.

What is a NFA Gun Trust?

Before we begin, let’s first look at what an NFA gun trust is.

An NFA gun trust is a revocable trust (they can be modified) wherein the trust property is made up for NFA Firearms and people that are part of the trust can all share possession of the NFA items.

A revocable gun trust (NFA Trust) is a legal entity that can be part of an estate plan but is typically used as a method to allow shared possession of a Title II Weapon. An unfortunate part of being a gun owner is how it may be difficult for our heirs/assigns to manage our firearms after we’re gone. By using a trust, you can avoid probate wherein a court gets involved as you never really owned the firearms yourself – the trust still owns them even after you’re gone so there’s no transfer.

An NFA Gun Trust is created and then it, not you, purchases and/or owns the NFA firearms.  Once they are in the trust as trustees, they can each possess the NFA Firearm legally.

In this article, we’re going to cover:

List of the Best NFA Gun Trusts

Now that we know what a NFA Gun Trust is, let’s look at the best NFA gun trust services you can use to set one up and ensure you’re good to go in benefiting from one:

Best NFA Gun Trusts

1. National Gun Trusts		Editor’s Choice Great Value Excellent Resources	Check Price
2. SilencerShop Gun Trust		Great Customer Service Solid Trust Expensive	Check Price
3. The Trust Shop		Budget Option Extra Resources	Check Price

However, if you’re not even sure what an NFA firearm is, you might want to jump down to our background section first to learn the basics.

Best NFA Trust Reviews

The NFA Gun Trust is a legal document that allows you to own and operate firearms. We have three top-rated trusts for your consideration, with costs included in each review!
The first two picks are fairly straightforward options and we’ve selected a budget option that’s has also made our recommendation list – so read on if this sounds interesting or check out our buyers guide for a deep dive into choosing a NFA Trust.

National Gun Trusts Review

National Gun Trusts is a great source for NFA Gun Trusts and additional resources like ATF form generators, fingerprint cards and ink, and complete walk-through guides.

They aren’t the cheapest option (they’re close) but they’re far from the most expensive option. This puts them very high on value – they offer an excellent product (the one I recommend the most for people looking for a traditional gun trust) with great resources and they are fairly priced and less expensive than inferior products.

What we love about them: Their NFA Gun trust is a solid document drafted by a firearms attorney that works in all 50 states.

This may sound similar to what other companies claim but when dealing with any product like this online, you MUST look at their reviews to see their track record. Someone might have a flashy website and a great sales pitch but unless they are actually a professional in the field (an actual firearms attorney) and have a healthy track record of reviews, I often steer clear.

In this case, National Gun Trusts has over 10,000 reviews with a 4.99 star rating. That’s so impressive it’s almost unbelievable.

There’s not much to say about their gun trust other than it works in all 50 states and is a good product. The additional resources are where they really shine.

For example, they offer basic, but convenient, services like shrinking your gun trust and laminating it to carry it with your gun gear easily.

However, they also offer premium services like consultations for filling out ATF paperwork/forms, ATF form generators to make it easier to fill out forms, and full walk-through guides that help explain every step of the process for you.

They even offer the official/approved fingerprint cards and ink to do your own fingerprints at home.

If you’re reading this review to find out which NFA gun Trust is right for you – you’re wasting your time at this point. Stop reading and go get this trust.

What we don’t love about them: Honestly, we have no complaints. For full transparency, we felt like we had to come up with a “con” so we listed that their price isn’t the cheapest option.

However, that’s far from an actual complaint. As an attorney myself, you don’t want to know how much I’d charge you to draft an NFA Gun Trust for you and, even though I think I’m a competent attorney, NFA Gun Trusts aren’t my specialty so I’m positive the product I could offer would be inferior to this one.

National Gun Trusts Pros and Cons

SilencerShop Gun Trust Review

SilencerShop is a great company and a great resource for silencers and information about them. They also offer a trust to help make purchasing their silencers a painless process.

Although they are a very reputable company, their trust doesn’t have near as many reviews as our #1 recommendation above, they don’t have as many extra resources, and it costs more than twice as much.

However, it can be very handy to have your trust through SilencerShop because it can be connected with your account and it makes future purchases a bit smoother.

We’d love to recommend it because we like the company so much, however, if you’re looking for a standard NFA gun trust, the #1 option above might be a better choice for you – it is surely a better value.

SilencerShop Gun Trust Pros and Cons

The Trust Shop Review

The Trust Shop offers the budget option trust on our list. At $49.95 it is the least expensive option. However, it is only $10 less than our #1 recommendation above.

Please note: just because this trust appears at the end of our list does NOT mean that we think this is a bad trust. Quite the contrary.

We think this is a good-enough trust to include on our list of recommended trusts. However, we just happen to rank two other trusts higher for various reasons (that may not be important to you).

The Trust Shop offers state specific trusts that have been created by a firearms attorney and they allow free revisions for life – this is GREAT!

And, although they only have 70 reviews as of the writing of this gun trust review, they have good marks and happy customers.

Although they have some additional resources/articles which are handy, there aren’t near as many resources as our #1 pick above.

The Trust Shop Pros and Cons

Is an NFA Trust Right for You?

After searching online about trusts becuase you’re looking to purcahse your next NFA firearm and finding this article, the first question you’re likely to ask is “Is an NFA trust right for me?”

First, great question.

Second, I have no idea.

Why do I not know if a trust is right for you? Because nowadays trusts are typically a good idea only for people in a particular situation.

Previously, if you wanted an NFA weapon (a silencer / suppressor, short barreled rifle, and a machine gun are all examples of an NFA item) getting an NFA trust was a good idea for most people. Heck, I even have one.

However, the ATF recently changed the rules (more on this below), and a standard NFA Gun Trust is no longer the go-to option for most firearms owners like they used to be. However, there’s a new/unique type of trust that has really caught our interest – so much so that we’ll be using it for our NFA purchases going forward. We cover this trust below in the section on Best NFA Gun Trusts.

Who is an NFA Trust For?

An NFA Gun Trust is perfect for you if you want to share possession of any firearm (not just an NFA or title II firearm) with other people – even in other states.

That’s it.

Previously, a trust document was a tool that allowed someone to add a firearm to their gun collection without the requirement of a signature from their Chief Law Enforcement Officer (CLEO).

However, now that the rules have changed, a trust only allows lawful possession by more than one person (spouse, friends, relatives, etc.).

Unfortuantely, even having access to the NFA firearm can be viewed as “constructive possession” and may be a legal problem. For example, if you have the NFA item registered in your name only (no trust) and you’re away from the house and your spouse can access or possess the firearm, the ATF could make the argument that they have possession of the NFA firearm and because it’s not registered to them, they are breaking the law.

This is unless, of course, you have an NFA trust and that NFA item and both of you are in the trust.

Also, if your buddy is visiting from another state and you go to the shooting range together, he can hold and use the NFA firearm as long as you’re there with him. But, unless he is in a trust with you for that particular firearm, you can’t ship it to him to borrow.

Who is an NFA Trust NOT For

If you have no desire to share NFA guns with other people, then don’t get a trust!

As we mentioned above (and we’ll explore more below), there used to be specific legal beneifits to getting a trust. In fact, without one, people in certain counties couldn’t posess things like a short barreled rifle (SBR) or a short barreled shotgun (SBS) because of the CLEO requirement.

A regular NFA trust is NOT a good thing to get “just because.” If you set up a regular NFA trust, you will have some paperwork to manage and EVERY time a firearm is added as trust property, EACH person on the trust will need to be fingerprinted and fill out paperwork.

That can be a real pain (e.g. NOT a benefit). However, that only needs to happen when you add new items to the existing trust.

Silencer Shop came up with a very creative workaround to this problem: the Single Shot NFA Gun Trust wherein you make a new trust for every NFA item so the same people aren’t necessarily added to every firearm. It’s super simple and fast – we cover it in more detail below.

If you want to legally share NFA firearms with others, then a trust may be worth it. However, if that’s really not that practical of an idea for you to share gun ownership (possession) with others, then the burden to get that tax stamp is likely too much.

It’s your call – and you really won’t go wrong either way as long as you decide what’s best for you and whether others might have access to your NFA firearm.

How to Get an NFA Gun Trust

Ok, you’ve decided that a gun trust is for you but don’t know how to get a trust.

It’s not that hard – you can either hire an attorney to draft a custom one for you (expensive… I should know, I’m a firearms attorney) OR you can make use of a NFA trust package like we recommend above.

I’ll just assume that you’ll use an NFA trust package because they’re so simple an cost effective.

Step 1 – Determine need for the trust

This may sound too simple, however, it’s important. Why are you getting a trust?

Are you getting one trust for all of your NFA firearms to share with the same group of friends/family or would you like more than one trust for certain firearms or people? Are you going to include other items in the trust?

If you’d like to use a new trust for each NFA firearm (you’ll have as many trusts as firearms), then you should check out the Single Shot NFA Trust by SilncerShop. We didn’t include it in the list above because it’s not a standard NFA trust.

If using a new trust for each NFA firearm (above) is not for you and you’d like to have a standard NFA trust wherein you can add and remove people and firearms whenever you wish, then we recommend using National Gun Trust’s NFA trust.

Step 2 – Create Trust

The next step, which also sounds very simple, is to actually create the trust.

The process can vary from state to state and depending on your purposes for the trust.

For this step, please consider using any of the package options above to walk you through the process.

Step 3 – Fund the Trust/Add Items

The final step is to fund the trust and/or add items to the trust.

This is very important as the trust typically only exists after it has something in it.

Firearms Trust Alternatives

Contrary to what some believe, an NFA Gun Trust is NOT required to legally possess an NFA firearm.

Instead, it is simply a legal tool that allows the trust to take possession of the NFA weapon and thereby allows everyone in the trust to legally possess it.

There are two main alternatives to a firearm trust:

Individual Transfers

The first alternative is to have the regulated firearm transferred directly to you – this is how most people purchase NFA firearms.

The process to get the NFA item is effectively the same: you stil need to fill out the ATF form 4, get fingerprints, and pay a tax before you’re approved and recieve your tax stamp back from the ATF.

The difference with an individual transfer is that the ATF Form is filed out in YOUR name and only you are allowed to have lawfl possession of the firearm.

Now, this does not mean other people can’t shoot or use your NFA firearm. You are allowed to let anyone who’s legally allowed to posess a firearm use your NFA item as long as you are present as well – you can’t let someone take control of the NFA firearm if it isn’t registered to them (or even technically allow them to have access to it).

Getting an FFL

The second alternative is to get your own Federal Firearms License (FFL).

By getting an FFL (even from your home), you are able to get firearms at dealer pricing and you can mak emoney selling those firearms or even just charging for transfers.

It’s even better when it comes to NFA firearms: you’re looking at many months to get a tax stamp from the ATF (the approval you need to possess the NFA item) whether you apply as an individual or you use a firearm trust. However, with an FFL, you get NFA weapons in 1 or 2 days (at a discount!).

Getting an FFL is not as hard as you think – we break the process down here: How to Get an FFL

NFA Trust Background

If you’re new to this whole process, we’re going to break-down NFA firearms and the laws and rules surrounding them and NFA trusts here.

What are NFA Firearms?

Let’s start with the basics.

The National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA) regulated a special class of firearms and required prior approval from the ATF and a federal tax paid before they could be possessed.

These NFA firearms are sometimes called a Title II Firearm as the NFA is considered to be “Title II” of our federal firearms laws. The Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA), although it came about 34 years later, is considered to be “Title I.”

These NFA items are:

• Silencers (Suppressors),
• Machine Guns (fully automatic firearms),
• Short Barreled Rifles (SBR) (rifles with a barrel lenght less than 16″ or an overal length less than 26″)
• Short Barreled Shotguns (SBS) (shotguns with a barrel length less than 18″ or an overall length less than 26″)
• Any Other Weapons (AOW) (yes, this is a real category and it inlcudes things like pen guns)
• Destructive Devices (DD) (grenades, bombs, etc.)

Standard (non trust) NFA Transfers

If you want to legally posses an NFA item, you must apply to the ATF on a Form 4 (there are different Forms for FFLs that are MUCH faster), include fingerprints and photos, and a check for $200 for all NFA wepaons but AOWs – they’re only a $5 tax.

Once the ATF runs a background check and approves the transfer, you’ll receive a copy of the Form 4 back with a stamp on it showing that the form is approved – this is the “Tax Stamp” that allows the person/entity on the Form to lawfully possess the NFA firearm.

If a NFA trust was used and is the approved applicant on the form, then anyone in the trust may lawfuly possess the NFA item. Although the trust is the firearms owner, the people in the trust are allowed possession.

ATF Rule Changes for NFA Gun Trusts

Previously, the local Chief Law Enforcement Officer (CLEO) needed to sign and approve the Form 4 application for NFA firearms.

This old gun trust rule was meant as a method to check with local law enforcement about the suitability of a person to have these types of federally regulated firearms. A long time ago, the local sheriff was likely to know about a problem person more than the federal government would.

The problem this caused is that one CLEO who happens to be anti-gun could (and in plenty of cases, did) effectively ban NFA items in their jurisdiction by refusing to sign the Form 4 for the ATF.

The way around this was to create a NFA Gun Trust because no CLEO signature was required.

However, the ATF has since changed the rules (See ATF’s Rule 41f) and no longer requires CLEO approval so much of the demand for gun trusts went away. Also, every trustee on a trust go through the process (fingerprints and so on) each time anyone wants to add an NFa firearm to the trust.

By removing the need in many cases and making it a bit more burdensome, the ATF has made NFA Gun Trusts fairly rare.

However, they clearly still have benefits for married couples and people who want to share their NFA Firearms with other people (children, friends, etc).

Gun Trust FAQ