Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier speaks during a meeting between Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state Cabinet at the Florida Capitol in Tallahassee on March 5, 2025. | Rebecca Blackwell, AP
Published on May 13, 2026 at 10:45 am
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Florida’s attorney general announced Tuesday that his office is taking legal action against the city of Jacksonville, alleging that the city knowingly and willfully maintained an illegal gun registry.
In a video posted on X, Attorney General James Uthmeier said Florida law prohibits government entities from keeping a registry of privately owned firearms.
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He said he is suing the city for $5 million and “any other relief the court deems appropriate.”
In March, Uthmeier challenged State Attorney Melissa Nelson’s decision not to pursue criminal charges after finding that city of Jacksonville security logbooks kept records of privately owned firearms and the people who carried them into two city buildings.
Uthmeier said his office lacks jurisdiction to prosecute but has a duty under Florida Statutes to promote consistent enforcement of state law.
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Uthmeier wrote that section 790.335(2)(a), Florida Statutes, makes it unlawful for a local government or government employee to “knowingly and willfully keep or cause to be kept any list, record, or registry of privately owned firearms or any list, record, or registry of the owners of those firearms.”
Uthmeier’s letter says logbooks kept from July 2023 to April 2025 contained “more than 140 entries recording the names, birthdates, ID numbers, and firearm types of over 100 individuals.” The attorney general concluded those entries constitute a forbidden “list, record, or registry” because the entries documented privately owned firearms, regardless of whether the log explicitly stated private ownership.
Uthmeier also rejected the state attorney’s finding that no one acted “knowingly and willfully,” writing that the statute’s mental state terms require only that a person intended to keep a log and knew the log documented privately owned firearms. Ignorance of the law, he said, is not a defense.
Uthmeier faulted city leadership for failing to prevent or to stop the practice, saying the logs were maintained with city resources at City Hall and another municipal building. He warned that registries can be “an instrument for profiling, harassing, or abusing law-abiding citizens based on their choice to own a firearm and exercise their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.”
No criminal intent found
The 4th Judicial Circuit’s State Attorney’s Office, which investigated for eight months, concluded investigators “found no evidence of criminal intent.” The state attorney’s report says the logbooks began after passage of the constitutional carry law, HB 543, and were created by a public works manager seeking data on how many people carried firearms into city buildings to improve emergency preparedness.
Investigators reported the directive “was never submitted to the City’s Office of General Counsel (OGC) for legal review,” and that the manager “mistakenly believed” the practice was legal. The state attorney’s office said the information “was never misused or shared” and found no evidence the data was distributed, copied or used for law enforcement.
The office recommended stronger legal reviews, tighter oversight and a full audit of security policies.
Response from Mayor’s Office
After the state attorney’s report at the end of December, Mayor Donna Deegan’s office said it had fully cooperated with the state attorney’s investigation from start to finish and thanked investigators for the careful review. The city will always follow the law and support constitutionally protected rights, she said.
After the attorney general’s announcement in March, the mayor’s office released the following statement:
“As we have stated from the very beginning, the records will show that Mayor Deegan and her leadership team were unaware of this action taken by an individual employee concerned about building security — and that the practice was immediately ended once it became known.
“The State Attorney, who comes from the same party as the Attorney General, conducted a thorough, eight-month investigation into this matter and concluded there was no deliberate misconduct. As the state pursues politically motivated deflections that waste taxpayer dollars, the mayor remains focused on addressing affordability challenges for the people of Jacksonville. It would be nice to have a state partner that is doing the same.”
This story was produced by News4Jax, a Jacksonville Today news partner.
