Jacksonville spent two years logging the name, ID number, and weapon type of every armed citizen who walked into City Hall.
Florida AG James Uthmeier just filed a $5 million lawsuit against Mayor Donna Deegan's Democrat administration to make them pay for it.
And the document that destroys their "we didn't know" defense was written by their own lawyers nineteen years ago.
Jacksonville City Hall Had Been Warned Since 2007
Back in 2007, the city's own lawyers put it in writing.
A legal memo from Jacksonville's Office of General Counsel explicitly told city leadership that the state's preemption law prevented them from creating or maintaining any gun registry.
They knew.
The logbooks started anyway – on July 20, 2023, just weeks after Democrat Donna Deegan was sworn in as mayor.
Security guards at City Hall and the Yates Building – which houses the tax collector and property appraiser – started recording the name, birthdate, state ID number, and weapon type of every armed visitor.
More than 140 entries documenting over 100 individual gun owners piled up in two physical binders over the next two years.
https://twitter.com/AGJamesUthmeier/status/2054293765653684336?s=20
Nobody stopped it until April 2025, when a resident tried to enter a city building while legally carrying a firearm.
Security officers denied him entry when he refused to hand over his personal information.
That complaint blew the whole thing open.
The State Attorney Punted – So Uthmeier Stepped In
State Attorney Melissa Nelson investigated and confirmed the registry was illegal.
Then she declined to prosecute.
Her office concluded the logbooks were created without criminal intent by a single manager who didn't realize it "created a legal problem" – a breakdown in communication and oversight, not a crime.
Uthmeier rejected that framing entirely.
Under Florida law, the mental bar is lower than Jacksonville's lawyers are pretending — officials only had to mean to keep the log while knowing it recorded privately owned guns.
Ignorance is not a defense.
And it's an especially hard sell when your own attorneys put the warning in writing before Donna Deegan was in her first term as city commissioner.
https://twitter.com/ActionNewsJax/status/2054525500232454427?s=20
The AG's complaint points directly at former Deputy Chief Administrative Officer Charles Moreland, who approved the logbook policy on July 13, 2023 – less than two weeks after Deegan took office.
Moreland was originally appointed by Republican Mayor Lenny Curry in 2022 and continued serving under Deegan for about two months into her term.
Under Florida statute, the state can collect the full $5 million civil penalty if it proves the registry was compiled "with the knowledge or complicity of the management of the governmental agency."
The AG argues Moreland's approval is exactly that.
This Is What the Second Amendment Preemption Law Was Built For
Florida isn't improvising here.
The state Legislature passed its firearms preemption statute – Florida Statutes §790.33 – in 1987 specifically to prevent local Democrat-run governments from doing end-runs around gun rights with their own regulations.
In 2011, the Legislature strengthened it with teeth: officials who knowingly violate preemption can be removed from office, fined $5,000 personally, and are prohibited from using public funds to defend themselves.
A separate provision – Florida Statutes §790.335, enacted in 2004 – specifically prohibits the registration of firearms and authorizes the attorney general to pursue civil penalties of up to $5 million against municipalities caught doing it.
Jacksonville's administration is now the test case for whether that law has any actual force.
Deegan's office called the lawsuit "politically motivated deflections that waste taxpayer dollars" and claimed she had no knowledge of the logbooks.
https://twitter.com/GregMaddenUSMC/status/2054517999097262521?s=20
That might be true – Uthmeier's complaint doesn't allege Deegan personally ordered the registry.
But the city's own Deputy CAO approved the policy, city security guards maintained it with city resources, and city lawyers had told them this was illegal since 2007.
This isn't a rogue employee situation.
This is a Democrat-run city government that built a gun registry and got caught.
Uthmeier put it plainly: "The Second Amendment is not a second-class right, and we will use all power of this office to protect the rights of Floridians."
The data they collected – names, birthdates, ID numbers, and weapon types of more than 100 law-abiding Floridians – is exactly what the left has always wanted and exactly what Florida law has always forbidden.
Sources:
- AWR Hawkins, "Florida AG Sues Jacksonville over Alleged Registry of Guns Brought into City Buildings," Breitbart, May 12, 2026.
- Jake Stofan, "Florida AG Sues COJ for $5 Million Over Gun Owner Logbooks," Action News Jax, May 12, 2026.
- "Jacksonville Faces $5 Million State Lawsuit Over Gun Logbooks," Florida Times-Union, May 12, 2026.
- "Florida AG Sues Jacksonville for $5 Million, Alleges City Kept Illegal Gun Registry," News4Jax, May 12, 2026.
- "James Uthmeier Sues Jacksonville for $5M Over Illegal Gun Registry," Florida Politics, May 12, 2026.
