House Bill 1339 restructures how handguns are added to Maryland’s handgun roster by creating a two-step clearance: a legal determination by the Attorney General and a separate safety/function testing requirement administered by the Maryland State Police (or an accredited lab). The Handgun Roster Board keeps the roster and provides procedural oversight but cannot make lawfulness, safety, or functionality determinations.
This reform narrows the Board’s decisionmaking, imposes documented chain-of-custody testing, establishes clear pass/fail thresholds and retest limits, and creates annual reporting and fee processes. The changes raise compliance costs for manufacturers and importers, require new operational coordination among the Attorney General, State Police, and the Board, and introduce confidentiality rules for materials submitted with petitions.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill requires petitioners to seek placement of a handgun on the roster by filing specified materials with the Attorney General, who performs a legal review and issues a written determination. Separately, the Maryland State Police (or an accredited lab it hires) must test a specimen under defined protocols and prepare a pass/fail test report; a handgun may be listed only after both steps are complete.
Who It Affects
Manufacturers, importers, and anyone petitioning to add a handgun to Maryland’s roster; Maryland State Police and accredited testing labs that will perform live-fire and safety testing; regulated firearm dealers who rely on the roster for lawful sales; and the Handgun Roster Board, which transitions to an oversight and administrative role.
Why It Matters
It creates a reproducible legal-and-technical gate: legal compliance is centralized in the Attorney General’s office while safety and functionality are verified by forensic-style testing. That combination standardizes determinations but also concentrates responsibility in two agencies, which changes where liability, fees, and administrative bottlenecks will arise.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The bill rewrites the approval mechanics for Maryland’s handgun roster so that one agency handles law and another handles testing. To petition to add a model, the petitioner must give identifying markings, an exemplar or detailed manufacturer specifications, manufacturer statements, and any additional information the Attorney General requests.
The Attorney General carries the burden of producing a written legal analysis explaining whether the handgun is lawful under state and federal law and whether remediation is possible when denying placement.
Testing is performed on a specimen acquired under documented chain-of-custody rules and may come from a commercial distribution center to reduce pre-test selection bias. Testing protocols require function testing, extensive drop/impact testing, evaluation of safety mechanisms, environmental and mechanical integrity checks, and minimum pass/fail thresholds.
The bill defines automatic failures—any unintended discharge or mechanical failure—and sets specific limits on malfunctions in the continuous live-fire test.If a specimen fails, petitioners can remediate and resubmit, but the bill caps refiling: a failed model cannot be refiled for two years unless evidence shows a material design or manufacturing change. The Maryland State Police may contract with independent accredited laboratories and must produce detailed written reports with photographs and videos.
The Board no longer decides substantive approvals: it must update the roster promptly after the Attorney General’s final determination, compile annual reports (including testing summaries and trends), recommend fees, and audit procedural compliance. The Attorney General may designate submitted materials confidential, and Board members with access to confidential materials face conflict-of-interest and recusal rules.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The Attorney General must issue a written determination with supporting legal analysis on whether a petitioned handgun is lawful for roster placement and publish final determinations online.
Petitioners must provide markings (serial number, manufacturer, model, caliber), an exemplar or detailed technical specifications, manufacturer representations, and any additional requested material.
Testing requires at least 500 continuous rounds of live fire using commercial factory ammunition; a specimen with more than six malfunctions during that sequence fails.
Any unintended discharge or mechanical failure during testing, and any discharge during drop/impact tests, automatically fails the specimen; a failed model cannot be refiled for the same design for two years absent documented material changes.
Handguns already on the roster as of October 1, 2026, must be tested by the Maryland State Police by March 31, 2028; the State Police must work with manufacturers and the Board to schedule testing.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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New definitions and delegation to Attorney General
The bill adds definitions used later (e.g., “exemplar”) and explicitly defines “Attorney General” to include a designee. That small textual change enables the Attorney General’s office to handle petitions and delegate internally, which is important operationally because the office will now receive technical files, coordinate with police labs, and publish legal analyses.
Petition process and Attorney General legal review
This section centralizes the approval authority in the Attorney General: petitioners file in the form the AG requires and bear the burden of proof. The AG must legally review the submission, identify any remediation options if denying placement, and publish determinations and their supporting legal analyses online. The AG also has a 45–day target review period that can be tolled while reasonable requests for additional information are pending and extended for good cause. Importantly, the Board receives the AG’s final determination only for procedural roster maintenance; it cannot independently approve or deny placement.
Testing protocols and laboratory reporting
This new section mandates technical testing to assess safety and functionality. Testing is normally performed on a single specimen sourced under chain-of-custody rules, with the State Police either conducting tests or contracting an accredited lab. Required procedures include at least 500 continuous rounds of live fire (no cleaning or fixes mid-test), multi-surface drop and impact tests, safety-mechanism evaluation, and environmental/mechanical integrity assessments. Test reports must identify specimen/ammunition, document test sequences, log malfunctions or discharges, and include photos/videos; each report must conclude pass or fail.
Board composition and staffing changes
The Board remains 11 members but the bill alters membership language to replace an explicit National Rifle Association representative with a broader category—either a handgun owner or a representative of an organization that advocates for handgun owners or safety and training. The Secretary provides reasonable staffing (executive secretary and admin support) and the Board must receive legal counsel from the Attorney General or other designated counsel for procedural oversight.
Board function shifts to oversight, fees and reporting duties
The Board’s role is recast: it compiles and publishes the roster but may not place guns on the roster or overturn AG or testing determinations. The Board must update the roster within 15 days after receiving an AG final determination, recommend an annual fee schedule (processing/testing/retesting) to cover administrative and testing costs, and produce an annual report to the General Assembly summarizing petitions, final determinations, testing outcomes, malfunction data trends, and recommendations for statutory/regulatory changes. The Board is also charged with monitoring compliance, auditing procedures, providing public education, and maintaining recusal/conflict rules for members.
Enforcement and criminal penalties remain intact
The bill leaves the existing criminal prohibitions and penalties for manufacturing or selling non-roster handguns largely in place. The Secretary retains authority to seek injunctive relief. The practical effect is that while approvals and testing change, noncompliance with roster requirements still carries felony exposure under existing statute.
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Explore Justice in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Consumers concerned with safety — standardized, documented testing and minimum pass/fail criteria create a verifiable safety bar and publicly available testing reports and legal analyses.
- Public safety agencies — the Attorney General and Maryland State Police gain central roles with clear responsibilities, which can improve legal consistency and technical rigor for roster decisions.
- Responsible manufacturers who invest in design and QA — clearer testing protocols and remediation windows can help compliant manufacturers demonstrate conformity and reduce uncertain denials.
Who Bears the Cost
- Manufacturers and importers — they must provide exemplars or detailed specs, pay testing and retesting fees, and potentially redesign products to meet defined thresholds, raising development and market-entry costs.
- Maryland State Police and contracted labs — MSP will absorb operational burdens coordinating chain-of-custody, conducting or overseeing intensive testing, and producing forensic-style reports (offset by fee recovery but requiring administrative capacity).
- Handgun Roster Board — its role changes to oversight and auditing, creating new staffing, training, and procedural obligations without substantive decision authority; Board members will need training and may face liability or discipline risks tied to confidential materials.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The bill tries to reconcile public-safety transparency and enforceable technical standards with due-process and market access: centralizing legal judgments in the Attorney General and adding forensic testing reduces ad hoc decisions and increases safety data, but it also creates concentrated administrative power, potential confidentiality that limits external scrutiny, and cost/time barriers for manufacturers seeking market entry.
The bill creates tightly specified technical gates (live-fire counts, malfunction thresholds, automatic-failure triggers) but leaves many implementation choices to agency regulations. That delegation is necessary for technical detail, but it concentrates practical discretion in the Attorney General and the Maryland State Police: calibration of testing parameters, chain-of-custody rules, limits on retests, and lab accreditation standards will determine how rigorous or permissive the regimen becomes in practice.
Confidentiality rules let the Attorney General shield manufacturer submissions, but those same rules can obscure the basis for denials unless the AG balances secrecy with the statutory online publication requirement for final determinations. Enforcement relies on a fee-shift model for testing; if fees are set too low agencies will face underfunding, but if set too high manufacturers could be priced out of the Maryland market.
Finally, the two-year refiling prohibition after failure aims to deter serial reapplications but may impede rapid iterative engineering fixes where safety improvements are incremental and fast-moving.
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