Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced a $5 million lawsuit against the City of Jacksonville for allegedly keeping an illegal gun registry.

“We are taking the City of Jacksonville to court for knowingly and willfully keeping an illegal gun registry in violation of Florida law,” Uthmeier said.

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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.

In a letter responding to Nelson’s Jan. 2, 2026, decision, Attorney General James Uthmeier said his office lacks jurisdiction to prosecute but has a duty under Florida Statutes, to promote consistent enforcement of state law.

Uthmeier wrote that section 790.335(2)(a), Florida Statutes, makes it unlawful for a “local government” or an “employee of … [a] government entity” 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.”

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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.

“The City of Jacksonville’s creation of a gun registry for any reason is unlawful and reprehensible,” Uthmeier previously said.

“Under the law, the Attorney General can pursue civil penalties of $5 million against municipalities if it’s proven they were complicit in and aware of the creation and maintenance of a gun registry,” Action News Jax stated.

Action News Jax shared further:

An eight-month investigation by the State Attorney’s Office found no criminal wrongdoing, with the final report contending the city employee involved did not realize what they were doing violated the law.

But in the newly filed suit, Uthmeier argued that as far back as 2007, city attorneys had addressed the question of tracking gun owners who entered city buildings.

He alleged that in that year, a memo drafted by city attorneys specifically warned the city could not create or maintain a gun registry.

The AG also claimed that, because the logbook policy was crafted by the city facility manager and approved by the City’s Deputy Chief Administrative Officer, it was therefore “compiled and maintained with the knowledge or complicity of City management”.

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The allegation the logbook policy was approved by former Deputy Chief Administrative Officer Charles Moreland is a departure from the State Attorney’s Office report, which asserted the directive was never reviewed or approved by “any senior official in either the Curry or Deegan administrations”.

Moreland served in both.

Appointed by former Mayor Lenny Curry in 2022, Moreland served continued to serve as Deputy CAO under Mayor Donna Deegan for about two months after she took office.

The AG’s complaint alleges he approved the logbook policy on July 13th, less than two weeks after Deegan entered office.

 

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