Is a gun trust worth the money

[jhunter]

Looking to get into suppressors since I have a good load out someone told me going through a trust makes everything easier is that true?

https://deanphillipslaw.com/georgia-gun-trusts-attorney/
Answered all of my questions and then some. Great people to deal with!
My only recommendation based on personal experience: I would not recommend using Silencershop's Trust.

 

[NWSharpshooter]

Ultimately, The bottom line is that if enough people f*^% around this way and try to manipulate the system by exploding what they see as loopholes in it,

ATF will crack down and close the loopholes just like they've done for bump stocks, 95% complete silencer kits called solvent traps,
80% complete ghost guns,
and who knows what else.

And maybe ATF's closing of the loophole will be more burdensome than we imagine. Maybe they'll beg Congress for much tighter restrictions on NFA weapons perhaps involving home visits from ATF agents or putting tracking chips like Apple ID tags on NFA weapons so the feds can monitor them remotely.

Until NFA Devices are considered the kind of arms that the second amendment applies to you don't have any constitutional right to these things it's merely a statutory right that exists at the whim of Congress and could be taken away at any time. Y'all ever heard the expression


"F**** around and find out!"

Oh it is absolutely working around the perimeter of the law, but it isn't breaking it. The majority of the people who used trusts in the first place were doing so as a work around. Perhaps they couldn't get CLEO sign off, or they didn't want to fool with prints. The whole thing is a work around.

Unless you want to share NFA items though, after 41F there isn't much of a reason to use a Trust. All of my NFA stuff lives in a trust, but it was done prior to 41F. Any future NFA purchases will be individual route as a trust no longer offers me any benefit.

 

[rumrunner55]

Ultimately, The bottom line is that if enough people f*^% around this way and try to manipulate the system by exploding what they see as loopholes in it,

ATF will crack down and close the loopholes just like they've done for bump stocks, 95% complete silencer kits called solvent traps,
80% complete ghost guns,
and who knows what else.

And maybe ATF's closing of the loophole will be more burdensome than we imagine. Maybe they'll beg Congress for much tighter restrictions on NFA weapons perhaps involving home visits from ATF agents or putting tracking chips like Apple ID tags on NFA weapons so the feds can monitor them remotely.

Until NFA Devices are considered the kind of arms that the second amendment applies to you don't have any constitutional right to these things it's merely a statutory right that exists at the whim of Congress and could be taken away at any time. Y'all ever heard the expression


"F**** around and find out!"

More of the same fuddness that has us in our current situation, don’t upset the big bad letter agency by doing what’s legal and within your right just slowly let it all get taken away from you for no reason besides appeasement

 

[spencer60]

Nope, I don't agree there at all. Following the intent of the law is not 'fuddness', it's simply following the law.

Yes it's a PITA but it's the way the system is structured. I don't have to like it any more than I like speeding laws, but if I get caught speeding it's still on me.

As was mentioned many times, if you don't want to deal with the responsible person BS, then go individual.

If you want to use a trust to share items then the rules are that you need to list the people who will be involved.

Also, I'm not sure if this is true for all trusts, but my original trust has a page where I have to list all amendments, in order. If I tried the remove/add trick with mine it would be pretty obvious, or I would have to spend a lot of time falsifying documents.

Finally, if the ATF really decided to change their 'look the other way' policy there's a bunch of simple ways they could 'fix' it.

Just rejecting every trust unless it has required record keeping like my old one does would be one way. Forcing them to be filed and approved each time they are amended would be another way.

Hopefully it won't come to that, especially since so few people do trusts anymore, but it could as a result of the shell games people play with them.

 

[Phydoux]

All you have to do is amend the trust to you only submit form 4 or form 1 and then reamend to add everyone back the second you send it off, worked 3 times so far you don’t need any additional fingerprints for anyone else

That’s what I do, I believe I’ve done it on 8 cans and 2 SBR. All my other stuff was before that.

 

[Phydoux]

H Heavy D

 

[blazedawg87]

The problem is *NOT* in ATF knowing that you exercised your power to take a person or even a few people off your trust.

The issue is you putting them right back on as soon as ATF approved that build or transfer.

If you only send them a copy of your trust which says on page one
"...my trustees are Able, Baker Charlie, and Delta"

but on page 4 it says
"I hearby modify my trust by removing Baker, Charlie, and Delta."

ATF would not necessarily know that you're putting those three people immediately back in as co-trustees as soon as they approve you.

ATF would not know you've done this before on all your other builds or transfers they've approved in the past.

Not unless you send them the latest copy of your trust with the amendment adding those three people back in as trustees after your transfer is approved. (Which nobody does because there's no law or rule that says you have to.)

But don't mistake ATF saying "it's OK to take somebody off your trust"
as approval for

the practice of routinely taking somebody off your trust just long enough to trick the ATF into thinking they're not a "responsible person" who will possess that weapon, and then you add them right back on!

isnt that just the same as tax loopholes? they wrote the law, you are just using it to your advantage.

 

[BHPSteel]

isnt that just the same as tax loopholes? they wrote the law, you are just using it to your advantage.

There's a whole industry populated by people whose sole job it is to find those tax loopholes and apply them on your behalf - which in turn gives you as a taxpayer some protection against the IRS, their thousands of pages of regulations and vexatious prosecution.

With a gun trust, it's you and the guy who wrote the trust. dealing with an agency that has an even worse history of "making **** up as they go along", but whose regulations are given just as much legitimacy by the judicial system (until recently), and are more than prepared to "stitch you up for the lulz".

So, similar in spirit, but not in practice.

 

[blazedawg87]

There's a whole industry populated by people whose sole job it is to find those tax loopholes and apply them on your behalf - which in turn gives you as a taxpayer some protection against the IRS, their thousands of pages of regulations and vexatious prosecution.

With a gun trust, it's you and the guy who wrote the trust. dealing with an agency that has an even worse history of "making **** up as they go along", but whose regulations are given just as much legitimacy by the judicial system (until recently), and are more than prepared to "stitch you up for the lulz".

So, similar in spirit, but not in practice.

so because its become an industry to find tax loopholes its ok and smart, but because he is using the ATF rules to his advantage its wrong? By what he said the ATF themselves are approving the changes so they cant blame anyone but themselves.

 

[BHPSteel]

No, it's become an industry because there's money to be made at doing it. The one thing that the IRS has going for it is that its rules apply to every adult in the country and the laws - whether we like them are not - are extensive and as a result - often contradictory. hence the 'loopholes'. The interpretations of (and indeed the lawsuits) that arise from exploiting those loopholes are themselves immensely profitable to the companies who advise the taxpayer, but the taxpayer gains too. Typically he has plausible deniability because he can say "my tax advisors' interpretation indicated that I was complying with the spirit of the law".

In the case of these trusts, there's no CURRENT rules in place that forbid a trust holder from acting in the way described. But given the ATF's capricious nature and their habit of retroactively changing rules, there could be a rule written up tomorrow that expressly forbids that behavior, and it not being grandfathered in. It would be arguable in court, and someone could argue it, but the current state is that anyone who does this is at risk of prosecution in the future. And the more people that do this AND PROMOTE IT IN PUBLIC FORA, in general, the greater the expectation that this "loophole" will be closed.

I'm not judging either the settlors of trusts, or the attorneys that write these trusts, but I've seen two trust formats in the last couple years, and they have extensive 'instructions on use'. NEITHER of them recommend in writing that the settlor does this removing and replacing of trustees when a purchase is made, but I have seen emails from the attorneys offices that suggest that the settlor *could* do this.

I came to my own conclusions abot why they wouldn't put this in their standard documentation. Your conclusions could be different, and that's OK.

The point is that there is a risk to the settlor of a trust if he does this in a clear attempt to 'simplify' an application for a Form 1 or 4 because it removes the ability for the ATF to ensure that prohibited persons do not gain access to firearms via a trust.

Prediction. Evenentually, a trustee on a gun trust will commit a crime and part of the discovery will unearth an attempt by the settlor of the trust to make sure that the trustee (who might have been a prohibited person) was not submitted to the ATF for a background check. And then we'll see this "loophole" closed.