(b) Any firearm described in Subdivision (a) shall be surrendered to the magistrate before whom the person is taken, except that in any city or county the firearms shall be surrendered to the head of the Police or Sheriff's Department. The officers to whom the firearms are surrendered, except upon the certificate of a judge of a court of record, or of the district attorney of the county, that the preservation thereof is necessary or proper to the ends of justice, shall annually, between the first and tenth days of July, in each year, destroy the firearms or cause them to be destroyed to such extent that they shall be wholly and entirely ineffective and useless for the purpose for which they were manufactured. If any firearm has been stolen and is thereafter recovered from the thief or his transferee, it shall not be destroyed but shall be restored to the lawful owner, in the event that owner is not prohibited from possessing the gun by Article 35 of the Police Code, as soon as its use as evidence has been served, upon his identification of the weapon and proof of ownership.
(Added by Ord. 399-82, App. 8/12/82)