Governor Wes Moore signed Maryland SB 334 into law on May 27, 2026, banning the manufacture, sale, and transfer of every pistol built around a cruciform…
The bottom line
Governor Wes Moore signed Maryland SB 334 into law on May 27, 2026, banning the manufacture, sale, and transfer of every pistol built around a cruciform trigger bar. The Second Amendment Foundation, National Rifle Association, and Firearms Policy Coalition filed suit the same day. This is a handgun ban signed by a governor who was fully aware it was a handgun ban, and it’s now going to courts that have a complicated history with Maryland gun restrictions.
This article is based on analysis from Bearing Freedom. Watch the original video. This is commentary, not legal advice.
He knew exactly what he was signing
Wes Moore did not sign a vague public safety measure and trust that the details were reasonable. He signed a bill that was covered nationally, that his own party’s House members passed 92-39 on April 8 after an extended floor fight, that the Maryland Senate had passed 28-16, and that had been described in plain English by every major gun rights organization as a categorical ban on the most popular handgun platform in America. He had three weeks to veto it. He chose to sign it.
NRA-ILA Executive Director John Commerford: “With a single stroke of his pen, Governor Wes Moore has banned one of the most popular handguns in America. Instead of going after criminals and enforcing existing laws, he has chosen to disarm law-abiding Marylanders and strip them of their constitutional rights.” That’s not hyperbole. That’s what the bill does.
I covered the cruciform trigger bar mechanism and why the bill sweeps every Glock ever manufactured into the ban in a previous piece. I’m not going over all of that again here. This one is about the signing itself, what Maryland gun owners are facing now, and where the litigation goes.
What Maryland gun owners face starting January 1, 2027
The ban on sales, manufacture, and transfers kicks in on January 1, 2027. You can still buy a Glock-pattern pistol legally in Maryland until then. If you already own one, you can keep it. You cannot sell it to another Maryland resident, and you cannot replace it if it is stolen.
Violating the ban is a misdemeanor carrying up to three years in prison and a $5,000 fine. Use a prohibited pistol in a violent crime and the penalty scales to five years minimum, twenty years maximum. The Maryland State Police are required to publish an official list of prohibited models before the ban takes effect, but the state’s own fiscal note acknowledged that police are unlikely to finish that list by the deadline. So the law is now signed, enforcement is coming, and the precise list of which guns are prohibited has not been finalized.
There are no out-of-state workarounds. Federal law requires handgun purchases to be transferred through a licensed dealer in the buyer’s home state. Receiving a Glock-pattern pistol from a relative out of state counts as a transfer under the new law. You can’t route around it.
SAF founder Alan Gottlieb: “Bans like the one just signed in Maryland are the antithesis of good policy. This unconstitutional law does nothing more than punish peaceable gun owners in the state, and it cannot be allowed to stand.”
The lawsuit landed before Moore put the pen down
The Second Amendment Foundation, NRA, and Firearms Policy Coalition filed their complaint in U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland on the day of signing, naming Governor Moore, Attorney General Anthony G. Brown, and Acting Maryland State Police Superintendent Michael A. Jackson as defendants in NRA v. Moore.
The 13-page complaint is direct: “Glock and Glock-style pistols are not relevantly different from any ordinary semiautomatic handgun. That is true even though they may be illegally modified. What is more, these pistols are in common use; indeed, they are among the most popular firearms in the nation. Yet if SB 334 is enforced, ordinary Marylanders will have no way to lawfully acquire these common, constitutionally protected arms. That is a handgun ban.”
The complaint’s framing is the right one. Under District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), firearms in common use for lawful purposes cannot be banned. The whole Heller holding was about a handgun ban in Washington, D.C. The Court specifically said handguns are the quintessential self-defense firearm. Maryland is trying to ban a platform that commands somewhere between 35 and 65 percent of the U.S. civilian handgun market. Whatever “common use” means, Glocks are it.
New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), requires the government to show any firearm regulation is consistent with the historical tradition of firearm regulation in America. Maryland would need to produce founding-era or Reconstruction-era analogues for banning the country’s most widely owned handgun on grounds that criminals could illegally modify it. No such historical tradition existed, because banning handguns was not something the founding generation did or contemplated.
The Fourth Circuit problem
The litigation path is not easy. It goes through the Fourth Circuit, which has been openly hostile to Second Amendment claims. In Snope v. Brown (formerly Bianchi v. Brown), the en banc Fourth Circuit upheld Maryland’s assault weapons ban 10-5 in August 2024, applying a version of Bruen’s text-history-tradition test that reached conclusions most serious observers found tortured. The Supreme Court denied cert in June 2025, with Justices Alito, Gorsuch, and Thomas on record saying they would have granted review.
The meaningful distinction the SAF/NRA/FPC complaint is leaning on: Snope was a rifle case. The Fourth Circuit reasoned that AR-platform rifles occupy different constitutional ground because of their military lineage, a dubious argument but one that gave the majority something to grab onto. Handguns don’t have that problem. Heller was a handgun case, decided specifically on the grounds that handguns are the arm most commonly chosen for home defense. The Fourth Circuit has less room to operate when the banned firearm is the exact category the Supreme Court already said cannot be banned.
The complaint’s theory is simple: SB 334 is a handgun ban, and Heller says handgun bans are unconstitutional. That’s it. A hostile circuit can work harder to ignore it, but there’s less legal fiction available here than there was in Snope.
The DOJ angle
The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division has a Second Amendment Rights Section now, and it has been moving. After Pam Bondi was removed in April 2026, Acting AG Todd Blanche kept the Section running and expanded its litigation footprint. The DOJ has sued Colorado over its magazine ban and sued the City of Denver over its AR-15 ban, both on the grounds that those laws unconstitutionally restrict firearms in common use.
Maryland’s Glock ban is a cleaner Heller target than either of those Colorado cases. Heller was specifically about a handgun ban. If the Second Amendment Rights Section is building a litigation strategy around what Heller actually means, SB 334 is the most direct test available. I wouldn’t be surprised to see DOJ get involved, either as a plaintiff or as amicus.
I’m not calling it a certainty. Acting AGs have full dockets and the DOJ’s litigation priorities don’t always follow a clean line. But a governor signing a law that directly defies 18-year-old Supreme Court precedent, with national press coverage and three gun rights groups in federal court by end of day, is a high-profile target. If the Second Amendment Rights Section is looking for a fight worth having, this is it.
What actually changed today
Glock switches are already a federal felony under 18 U.S.C. § 922(o), up to ten years per device whether or not it’s attached to a firearm. The people running switches on stolen guns were already facing federal charges that make a three-year Maryland misdemeanor look irrelevant. SB 334 was never going to change their math.
Starting January 1, 2027, Maryland residents cannot legally buy the most popular handgun in America. Current owners are holding non-transferable property. Someone who moves to Maryland from Virginia next year brings a Glock they can’t replace if it gets stolen. The criminals whose conduct gave this bill its political cover will keep running the same operations with the same gear.
Moore could have vetoed this. He had three weeks and a clean opportunity to say the bill was constitutionally indefensible, which it is. He signed it instead. Courts have been cleaning up Maryland’s gun laws for years, and now they have another one to deal with.
Maryland gun owners: you have until January 1, 2027 to buy a Glock in your own state. Do that. Then watch the litigation and keep this signing in mind when you vote.
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