Well...^^ that ^^ hasn't been my experience so far. It may just be a week or two, but it has extended the process a little. At a minimum, you lose the time it's in transit back to dealer or individual, get corrected, in transit back to WV, plus the time it takes to get sorted at the NFA Branch and make its way back to the assistant's desk. At that point it moves into another stack...many days after it would've been moved into that second stack.
As info...I think everybody is aware that examiners aren't assigned by state anymore, so neither submission date nor state will set a trend. It seems like they're just handing stacks out to different people. I had that confirmed this morning when I got my reply from asking for the Aug form to get approved with the July "error" forms. The reply was:
Research assistants (my position) and examiners as well aren't authorized to pull applications and work them out of order. That being said since they are very close together in time they may inadvertently get worked at approximately same time. Applications from the spread of a few weeks or so get doled out to dozens of people working the forms. Weirdly long delays in the chronology of an application is typically due to an error being found on an application and then the delay of mailing back and forth.
So, that confirms the theory and explains why there sometime seems to be no rhyme or reason to the order forms are approved. Technically, two forms opened back-to-back could be approved weeks (or more) apart since one would be on the top of somebody's stack and the next on the bottom of somebody else's stack.
