A Justice Department rule published Thursday restores firearms rights to people barred from owning guns. It budgets 30 minutes of federal examiner time per application and does not count the cost of making the decision. That is stated, not inferred. The rule declines to attribute a cost to the deliberative portions of the decision making process, on the ground that deliberation is carried out by employees whose labor costs will not change based on how much time is spent deliberating. What is not being costed is the finding that an applicant is not likely to act in a manner dangerous to public safety. The file runs to criminal history, arrest records, mental health adjudication records and three character references. Thirty minutes is budgeted for intake and determining next steps. At the rule's own wage of 63.94 dollars an hour and its own estimate of 330,000 applicants in year one, each additional minute of real adjudication costs 351,670 dollars across the programme. Seventy three minutes crosses 100 million dollars, which is the line that makes a rule major under the Congressional Review Act. The rule certifies it is not major. OMB reviewed it and agreed, at 74.30 million. Sixteen state attorneys general asked that every decision carry a written opinion summarising the record, the disability, and the applicant's rehabilitation. Commenters said the staffing would be insufficient to investigate the applications. The response addresses state and local burden and does not reach the staffing point. The arithmetic underneath was not checked either. The cost tables print 30 dollars times 330,000 applicants as 9,990,000, three separate times. It is 9,900,000. The rule's own Executive Order 12866 section uses the right figure and reaches 59,799,025 for the public. Its cost tables use the wrong one and reach 59,889,025. Two sections of one final rule cost the same line differently and neither refers to the other. The paperwork section reports 330,000 respondents at 65 minutes each. Table A(1) counts 990,000 character references at 10 minutes each and totals 75. None of this makes it a major rule, and the fee inside it is a transfer rather than a real cost, which pushes the true resource total down toward 64 million. It does mean the labor of deciding who gets their firearms rights back was left out of the calculation that decided who has to review the rule!!