A gun trust is a legal entity designed to own firearms, usually NFA items, such as short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, suppressors, and machine guns. There are many advantages to utilizing a trust, on which you are a trustee. Being a trustee means having access to all of the items held by the trust. This means that you can appoint your spouse, siblings, friends, etc., to the trust and they can freely use the firearms in the trust just as if they owned them. Gun trusts are helpful tools when expanding your firearm collection; they allow you to pass your collection on to family and allow others to experience your NFA items easily.

Table of Contents

• NFA Registration Methods
• Are Gun Trusts Necessary?
• Can I Create My Own Gun Trust?
• Can I Transfer a Suppressor to a Trust?
• How to Make a Trust for a Suppressor?

• Individual - The most straightforward method requires no additional information or costs but is also the most limited regarding who can possess your NFA items
• Trust - The most flexible option, trusts allow you to share the items among trustees; trusts like the Single Shot do not require any additional paperwork or notarization to form.
• Corporation - This is the least common registration method; incorporated businesses can own NFA items, which can be shared among the corporation's officers. 

Yes, gun trusts or "NFA trusts" are highly recommended for the best NFA ownership experience. While not required for ownership, a gun trust has many benefits that you do not enjoy as an individual. A suppressor trust can help you to get the most out of your NFA tax stamps. Whether you only own one NFA item or intend to fill your safe with SBRs and silencers, a trust will give you more freedom than owning the items as an individual. Gun trusts allow you to easily share your NFA items with friends or family at the range or during a hunting trip, and they also make it much simpler to pass down NFA items to family members. 

You can draft your own gun trust, but we recommend allowing a trusted lawyer to take care of this for you. Gun trusts used to cost hundreds of dollars and required piles of paperwork and signatures to form; today, simple, streamlined options such as the Single Shot trust cost only $24.95. Pre-drafted trusts, like the ones on our site, have all of the benefits of custom trusts but are much more affordable and can be formed almost instantly. If you plan on expanding your arsenal with multiple NFA items, the Single Shot unlimited and traditional NFA trusts can accommodate even the largest collections. 

Absolutely! You can transfer a suppressor to a trust in two main ways. You can set up your trust and have the suppressor transferred directly to your trust when you file your Form 4; this is the easiest way to get your silencer on your trust. As long as your trust is uploaded to your Silencer Shop profile, we can automatically assign your NFA items to your trust.

If you already have a silencer or SBR that you filed for as an individual and want to transfer it to a trust, we can help with that as well. This process is called a private transfer, which is between 2 non-licensed parties (you and your trust). A private transfer does require an additional NFA tax stamp and another ATF Form 4, but you can possess the item during the waiting period.

We can assist if you're curious about how to set up a trust. Silencer Shop offers a variety of trust options drafted for the sole purpose of holding NFA items such as silencers, SBRS, and more. These trust options are the most straightforward way to set up a gun trust; we use your registration information to establish the trust, which means you have no additional paperwork! Single Shot trusts can even be formed without needing the document notarized. Simply add it to your cart, check out, and you're done!