Comment on FR Doc # 2026-08912
Anonymous AnonymousSupportIndividual
Summary: An individual commenter supports the removal of the Chief Law Enforcement Officer (CLEO) notification requirement for National Firearms Act (NFA) items. They argue that the requirement is an arbitrary burden on both applicants and law enforcement, noting that CLEOs rarely keep records of these notifications and that the background check already sufficiently addresses safety concerns.
The notification of the CLEO for certain NFA items is an arbitrary requirement that needs to go away. Most CLEOs don’t even keep a record of NFA firearm ownership because it would be cumbersome to them, so therefore most CLEOs take the notification and promptly throw away the paper. All this does is cause the applicant to waste time and resources mailing the copy of their NFA application form, and a waste of time for the CLEO office to open the mail and promptly throw it away. The applicant has already undergone a background check for the NFA item; the CLEO should not be a part of the process. This process just puts an “evil” connotation on lawful NFA firearms, which have rarely been used in criminal activity. I don’t have the numbers handy, but criminal acts with lawfully owned NFA items is extremely rare, so making tens of thousands of firearm owners jump through one more step just for the NFA item is nothing more than a burden created for the sake of making a burden for the owner, especially if they have more than 1 NFA item (which many NFA owners have).