Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier is crying foul over a local prosecutor's determination that a Jacksonville city employee did not violate a state statute prohibiting the creation of any kind of list of gun owners when they established a registry for concealed carry licensees who visited City Hall.
In a post on X, Uthmeier announced that his office is opening up civil proceedings against the city, which could result in a $5 penalty.
Jacksonville's firearm registry exposed law-abiding firearm owners to the very dangers that the prohibition was meant to prevent.
— Attorney General James Uthmeier (@AGJamesUthmeier) March 2, 2026
My office is correcting @SAO4Florida's misinterpretation of the law and moving forward with civil enforcement against the City of Jacksonville. pic.twitter.com/eH0tqJPIT4
In his letter, Uthmeier saysit doesn't matter if the list of gun owners was ever transmitted to other government officials or whether it contained a specific list of firearms brought to City Hall. Under Florida law, the AG argues, "none of those observations, however, negate the alleged crime."
“Ignorance of the law is no excuse,” he wrote.
“City leadership,” he added, either was “fully aware” and “did nothing,” or “failed to adequately train and supervise” staff.
The scrutiny from Tallahassee opens up a new chapter on a book the Mayor’s Office thought was closed.
“The City of Jacksonville fully cooperated with State Attorney Nelson and her office from start to finish, and we thank them for conducting a careful and thorough review,” read a statement from a Deegan administration spokesperson.
“They confirmed that the policy in question was implemented by an individual employee concerned with building security unbeknownst to Mayor Deegan or her leadership team. This practice immediately ended when it was brought to the administration’s attention. Jacksonville will always follow the law and support constitutionally protected rights.”
Uthmeier says the empoyee didn't need to "knowingly and willfully" violate the statute forbidding governments from making lists of gun owners. They only had to "knowingly and willfully" create that list, which is where his comment that "ignorance of the law is no excuse" comes into play.
I believe the AG is correct here. Whether or not his office will get the courts to agree, though, is another issue entirely. The mayor's contention is that she didn't know about the creation of the list and put a halt to it once it was discovered. Uthmeier says that doesn't matter, and that if the employee created that list on their own it was, at least in part, because the city failed to educate its employees on Florida law.
Even if the intent was to simply get an idea of how many people were lawfully carrying at City Hall, there was no need to record the personal information of those individuals. A simple headcount would have sufficed, and since it would have been anonymized it would have complied with the statute in question. I'm glad to see Uthmeier is taking this issue seriously after the local State's Attorney gave Jacksonville a pass on its illegal list, and hopefully the media attention generated by his decision will raise awareness of the law and allow other local governments to clearly inform employees not to repeat Jacksonville's potentially costly mistake.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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