I'm curious if anyone has heard anything on why the wait times seem to be vectoring upward pretty steeply now? I understand that when they started working trusts and individual submissions together a bit after 41F, trust times came down quite a bit and individual times increased, but now, from the chart on NFA tracker, it seems both are headed up.
That seems strange to me for a few reasons. First I thought I read a few places several months ago that they were getting a plus up in FY19 to bring in more examiners. Second, the eform process for F1s that just rolled out is supposed to be much more efficient. Third, the new barcode system was supposed to cut the data entry time at the ATF.
All these combined really seem like they should result in a decrease in examiner workload and an improvement in wait times, but not so.
I know the FBI backlog is hanging up more and more people lately, could that alone be what's pushing the majority of approvals out?
I'm just curious if anyone has some insight because the trajectory seems odd to me. My first three cans were all approved in ~6 mo or less, with my last one getting approved at exactly 150 days in Jan '18. I submitted another last week and things don't look quite so rosey this time.