Do You Need More than One NFA Trust?

Gun Trust USA is perhaps the first and only provider of NFA trust solutions to educate the public about the benefit of using multiple NFA trusts. We believe there are very persuasive reasons to use either a single comprehensive trust for all of your NFA firearms, or one trust per NFA firearm. A reasonable person could prefer either of these options—it really comes down to your personal preference. What’s important is that you consider the differences between these options before you begin using a trust to register NFA firearms.

To examine the benefits of using either a single trust or multiple trusts, we will focus on the changes by the Obama Administration to ATF’s regulations under the National Firearms Act. These changes, known as 41F, apply to new applications to register NFA firearms. Each so-called ‘responsible person’ connected to a new NFA application must complete ATF Form 5320.23 and provide fingerprints and photographs. You can think of a responsible person as someone who is authorized to possess the NFA firearm.

Remember, the benefit of using a trust is the opportunity it provides you to appoint other people to your trust so they may legally possess the NFA firearms registered by your trust. Additionally, subject to your state’s law, your beneficiary could keep your trust and NFA firearm without the need to obtain a new tax stamp.

Not all trusts are the same. Most trusts marketed as ‘gun trusts’ are poorly designed for the 41F regulations. By using Gun Trust USA, you’ll have a solution that minimizes the burden of 41F. How? Each Gun Trust USA customer receives customized forms enabling them to easily add or remove the other responsible people in their trust.

Why is this important? If you remove the other people from your trust before making an NFA application, then only you will need to complete Form 23 and the fingerprinting and photographs. After ATF approves that NFA application and issues a tax stamp, you may appoint people to your trust. As long as they were not in your trust during the processing of an NFA application, they will not be required to complete Form 23, nor will they need to provide fingerprints and photographs. Thus, before and after each NFA application, you may complete use your customized Gun Trust USA forms to minimize the impact of 41F.

By now we’ve learned that some customers prefer a ‘one and done’ approach with their trust. Instead of removing people from their existing trust before a new NFA application, they simply create a new trust using Gun Trust USA’s Single Shot Edition—offered exclusively through Each time they want to register a new NFA firearm, they create a new trust as the sole responsible person. After ATF issues the tax stamp, they can use their customized Gun Trust USA forms to appoint to the trust other people who will then be authorized to possess that trust’s single NFA firearm. When they wish to register another NFA firearm, they avoid the need to remove people from an existing trust by just creating a new trust. Because people do not need to be removed from existing trusts, they continue to have authority to possess the NFA firearms registered previously by Single Shot trusts.

To make Single Shot Edition more attractive, Gun Trust USA and Silencer Shop offer a substantial discount, so multiple trusts might not exceed the cost of using a single, comprehensive trust for all your NFA firearms. Further, the incredibly convenient Silencer Shop system enables you to create your trust documents simply by checking a box during the online checkout for your silencer purchase or when you use Silencer Shop’s new Form 1 service.

Why do people prefer a single NFA trust or multiple trusts? Some of our customers feel more comfortable managing a single set of trust documents for all their NFA firearms. They also feel the customized forms to add and remove people in their trust before and after an NFA application is simple. On the other hand, some people prefer a single trust for each NFA firearm to avoid the need to remove people in an existing trust before each new NFA application. Instead, each NFA application is like a clean slate with a new trust, and, again, the customized Gun Trust USA forms make it easy to add people to a trust after an application.

Using multiple trusts means organizing multiple sets of trust documents, but the unique collaboration between Gun Trust USA and Silencer Shop offers a great solution to help you stay organized. Each Gun Trust USA Single Shot Edition has a name based on the serial number of the NFA firearm registered to that trust. This makes it easy for you to match your Gun Trust USA documents with its own NFA firearm.

Regardless of your preference to use a one comprehensive NFA trust or multiple ones, we hope this article reveals the importance of using a trusted source to create your NFA trust. Gun Trust USA is on the leading edge of NFA firearms ownership because of our dedication to helping people register, handle, and inherit NFA firearms with the most innovative solutions possible. 

Create your Gun Trust USA documents now at this link, or visit to learn more about the Single Shot Edition.


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