Gun rights restoration cost: the fees a page states

Gun rights restoration cost, limited to published figures

Gun rights restoration cost is not a single checkout. The figure the Department has actually published for its own application is $30. The fee page, updated August 17, 2026, says there is a non-refundable fee for processing Federal Firearm Rights Restoration applications, that the fee is $30, and that the Attorney General will periodically review the cost of processing and may adjust it. A change is published in the Federal Register. Until that publication, the number on the fee page is the number. A blog should not round it, discount it, or quote a different one.

Section 107.40 is the regulation that authorizes a fee and a waiver or reduction. The final-rule preamble is where the $30 figure was set, and the fee page is where the Department tells applicants the amount and the payment path. After the application is submitted, the person is redirected to Pay.gov. The page lists three ways to pay: a direct bank transfer from a bank account, which it calls ACH; a credit or debit card; or PayPal. It does not list cash, and it does not list a personal check mailed to a post office box. This article will not add a fourth method.

A checklist before anyone pays

Paying is late in the sequence. The fee page puts Pay.gov after submission. The questions page puts fingerprints after the first part of the e-application. Court papers and the three references are the work that belongs earlier, because the same questions page gives 30 days to finish once the e-application starts.

1. Read the current fee page. Confirm the amount is still $30 and that the payment methods have not changed.
2. List the other offices that charge: the convicting court for copies, the state repository or local agency for criminal history, and the participating post office for the application fingerprints. Ask each one what it charges. Write the answer down.
3. If an FBI Identity History Summary would help because a line may be wrong, budget the $18 the FBI FAQ states, separate from the $30. That summary is not required by the sentence that states the application fee.
4. If $30 cannot be paid, read the waiver section before submitting. The request has to state the reason. Do not assume the fee disappears because a box was noticed.
5. Keep the Pay.gov confirmation with the rest of the file. Non-refundable means a later withdrawal is not described as a refund.

Waiver and reduction

The fee page says applicants may request a waiver or a reduction. The applicant must state the reason a waiver or reduction should be granted. A note on the page says additional information about waivers and reduction requests will be made available soon. The questions page says the same thing in slightly different words: the applicant sets forth the reasons a waiver or modification should be granted, the fee may be waived or reduced because of indigency, and more information will be made available soon. "Soon" is the Department's word. This article will not fill the gap with a sample budget, a poverty guideline, or a list of benefits that automatically qualify. Those would be legal and factual claims the page has not made.

What a person can do now is gather the facts a reason has to rest on: household income, the bills that make $30 a hardship, and any document that shows that hardship. When the Department publishes the further instructions, those facts are what the form will ask the person to check. Inventing a hardship, or omitting income the form asks for, runs into the same perjury and voidness rules that apply to the rest of the application. Section 107.80 is the void-from-the-start provision for a willful false material statement or a willful omission of requested material information. A fee waiver is not a safer place to guess.

A waiver request is not a decision on the firearms disability. It is a request about the fee. A grant of a waiver, if one is made, would mean the fee was reduced or not charged. It would not mean relief was granted. A denial of a waiver, if one is made, would mean the fee stands. The pages do not say that a denied waiver is a denied application. This article will not say it either.

When the Department said it would start collecting

The fee page states the amount. It does not, on its own, restate the staged opening of the portal. The program's published rollout dates, including the date the Department's home page tied to fee collection, are kept in how long to get gun rights back, which cites the home page dated August 17, 2026, for a January 4, 2027 opening that includes fee collection after an invited phase and a November 4, 2026 public opening limited to the first 5,000 applicants. Those dates can change. The questions page describes the later phase as a test of the payment portal. Check the current program page before relying on a calendar. A fee that is not being collected yet is still the fee the page states. It is not a statement that the application is free forever.

Costs this article will not total

Fingerprints are the clearest example. The fingerprint page says to bring a form of payment and to ask the post office what it accepts. It does not print a price. Adding an assumed price to the $30 would produce a confident wrong number. Court clerks and state repositories are the same. Some charge by the page. Some charge a flat search fee. Some waive their own fee under their own rules. None of that is the Department's $30, and none of it is uniform enough for a table of states. This series does not publish state fee schedules.

A lawyer's fee, if someone hires one, is a contract with that lawyer. This article does not estimate it. My Gun Rights Back does not collect the Department's fee. The beta page describes free use of the software while it is tested, for people who receive a beta spot, in exchange for feedback. That free access is not a discount on Pay.gov, not a waiver, and not a statement about the Department's fee. Software charges, if a price is offered later, would be separate from the $30. No price is stated here because none is being charged by this page.

What to ask an attorney

Ask whether a waiver request is appropriate on those facts, what "indigency" will mean once the Department publishes the rest of the instructions, and which of the other charges are actually required for that record. Ask whether a quote from a clerk includes the certified copy section 107.10(d) describes, or only a docket printout. Bring the fee page, the Pay.gov confirmation if it already exists, and the written quotes from the clerk and the repository. A round number remembered from a phone call is harder to use.

Also ask the question the total tempts people to skip: whether the fee is the thing to solve first. A $30 payment on an application that is missing the judgment does not repair the missing judgment. The documents are the larger errand. They are listed in how to restore gun rights and, for the court file, in court records gun rights.

My Gun Rights Back is the public name of Rights Restore, software from Desk Technologies, Inc.. It can help a person keep the quotes, the waiver notes, and the Pay.gov record together. It does not pay the Department, it does not decide a waiver, and it does not promise that any right will be restored. No outcome is guaranteed.