{"id":269560,"date":"2026-05-13T15:23:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T15:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/269560\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T15:23:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T15:23:07","slug":"florida-attorney-general-sues-jacksonville-for-5m-over-alleged-gun-registry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/269560\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida attorney general sues Jacksonville for $5M over alleged gun registry"},"content":{"rendered":"

Florida\u2019s attorney general announced Tuesday that his office is taking legal action<\/a> against the city of Jacksonville, alleging that the city knowingly and willfully maintained an illegal gun registry.<\/p>\n

In a video posted on X, Attorney General James Uthmeier<\/a> said Florida law prohibits government entities from keeping a registry of privately owned firearms.<\/p>\n

He said he is suing the city for $5 million and \u201cany other relief the court deems appropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n

In March, Uthmeier challenged State Attorney Melissa Nelson\u2019s decision not to pursue criminal charges<\/a> after finding that city of Jacksonville security logbooks kept records of privately owned firearms and the people who carried them into two city buildings.<\/p>\n

Uthmeier said his office lacks jurisdiction to prosecute but has a duty under Florida Statutes to promote consistent enforcement of state law.<\/p>\n

Uthmeier wrote that section 790.335(2)(a), Florida Statutes, makes it unlawful for a local government or government employee to \u201cknowingly 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Uthmeier\u2019s letter says logbooks kept from July 2023 to April 2025 contained \u201cmore than 140 entries recording the names, birthdates, ID numbers, and firearm types of over 100 individuals.\u201d The attorney general concluded those entries constitute a forbidden \u201clist, record, or registry\u201d because the entries documented privately owned firearms, regardless of whether the log explicitly stated private ownership.<\/p>\n

Uthmeier also rejected the state attorney\u2019s finding that no one acted \u201cknowingly and willfully,\u201d writing that the statute\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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 \u201can 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

No criminal intent found<\/p>\n

The 4th Judicial Circuit\u2019s State Attorney\u2019s Office, which investigated for eight months, concluded investigators \u201cfound no evidence of criminal intent.\u201d The state attorney\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Investigators reported the directive \u201cwas never submitted to the City\u2019s Office of General Counsel (OGC) for legal review,\u201d and that the manager \u201cmistakenly believed\u201d the practice was legal. The state attorney\u2019s office said the information \u201cwas never misused or shared\u201d and found no evidence the data was distributed, copied or used for law enforcement.<\/p>\n

The office recommended stronger legal reviews, tighter oversight and a full audit of security policies.<\/p>\n

Response from Mayor\u2019s Office<\/p>\n

After the state attorney\u2019s report at the end of December, Mayor Donna Deegan\u2019s office said it had fully cooperated with the state attorney\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

After the attorney general\u2019s announcement in March, the mayor\u2019s office released the following statement:<\/p>\n

\u201cAs 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 \u2014 and that the practice was immediately ended once it became known.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

This story was produced by News4Jax<\/a>, a Jacksonville Today news partner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Florida\u2019s attorney general announced Tuesday that his office is taking legal action against the city of Jacksonville, alleging…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269561,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-269560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269560\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}