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Md. Code, Public Safety § 3-501

This is the official text of Md. Code, Public Safety § 3-501, part of Maryland’s Code, Public Safety — governs police, fire, and emergency services.

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§3–501.

Official statutory text

(a) In this section, “manufacturer” means a person who possesses a federal license to engage in the business of manufacturing firearms or ammunition for sale or distribution.

(b) Except as provided in subsection (c) of this section, a law enforcement agency seeking to dispose of a handgun owned by the agency shall:

(1) destroy the handgun;

(2) sell, exchange, or transfer the handgun to another law enforcement agency for official use by that agency;

(3) sell the handgun to a retired police employee in accordance with § 2–415(c) of this article;

(4) sell the handgun to the law enforcement officer to whom the handgun was assigned; or

(5) sell, exchange, or transfer the handgun to a manufacturer.

(c) If a law enforcement officer is killed or dies in the performance of duty, a law enforcement agency may transfer the handgun of the deceased officer to the next of kin of the deceased officer, if the requirements of Title 5, Subtitle 1 of this article relating to firearms applications are met.

Status: in_force · Read it on the official government site

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About this page: Statute text is reproduced from official government publishers via the Open US Law dataset (Vaquill AI, snapshot v2026.08, CC BY 4.0). Primary legislative text like this is public domain under the government-edicts doctrine (Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, 2020). We link every section back to its official source so you can verify it independently.