Tallahassee, FL –-(Ammoland.com)- Earlier this month AmmoLand brought its reader a story of an alleged illegal gun list compiled by the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Department using the FINDER system in Florida.
Pawnbrokers are required to enter information on firearms transactions into the FINDER system. The system transmits the serial number of the firearm along with the make and model to the local sheriffs’ department to make sure that the person pawning the gun, did not steal it. A bug in the system also transmitted the names and addresses of the transfers to local law enforcement. The Charlotte County Sheriff’s Department used the information to create a list of gun owners.
In Florida, it is a felony for law enforcement agencies to keep a list of gun owners under Florida Statute 790.335. The Charlotte County State’s Attorney’s Office determined that the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Department did not violate any laws in compiling the list. After the results of the investigation, Florida Carry asked the Attorney General’s Office of the state to carry out an independent investigation.
AmmoLand has discovered with the help of reporter Andrew Sheets that abuse of the FINDER system appears to extend past Charlotte County into surrounding jurisdictions. It isn’t clear how far the abuses extend across the state.
Emails obtained by Mr. Sheets and AmmoLand shows that the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Department shared their list with other departments. One of the other law enforcement agencies that the Sheriff shared their list with is the North Port Police department.
The Sarasota Sheriff’s Office has also been compiling a list using the FINDER system. More disturbing is that the Sheriff provided an unredacted list of pawn transactions via email to Mr. Sheets. The file contains not only information about the firearm, but also the names of the person pawning the gun, putting them at risk of robbery and violating their privacy rights.
AmmoLand received a tip that the FINDER system was never supposed to release the gun owner’s personal information to law enforcement organizations. We spoke to a support team member off the record, and they told AmmoLand that the system has been fixed and no longer transmits anything outside the serial number and make and model of the firearm.
It seems like there was a systemic failure in the FINDER system. The pawn reporting system was not in compliance with Florida law. It looks like the IT company that maintains the system has now fixed the database only to transmit the correct data. It also appears the data transmitted is now in compliance with current Florida law.
AmmoLand has made multiple attempts to contact anyone at Law Enforcement Technology & Research (LETTR) to get a comment on the abuse of the FINDER system. The non-profit corporation has decided not to respond to any contact by AmmoLand. It is not known when LETTR fixed the pawn system, or when they discovered that the database was out of compliance with Florida law.
Initially, last May, Charles County State’s Attorney’s Office investigated the claims of abuse of the FINDER system. The office released their findings, stating that there was not an abuse of the pawn database and that the Charlotte Sheriff’s Department did everything legally.
Florida Carry was shocked by Charles County State’s Attorney’s determination. AmmoLand then reached out to ASA Anthony Kunasek to get clarification as to why he and the office didn’t believe that there was a violation in the law. To us and many gun-rights advocates the abuse of the system was cut and dry.
Because of the hard work of Florida Carry, and the pressure from the public, State Attorney Amira Fox’s office has now opened an investigation into the origin and background of the failure of the FINDER system. Florida Carry says that they look forward to the results of her investigation.
AmmoLand will track the developments in the investigation and inform readers of the outcome.
About John Crump
John is a NRA instructor and a constitutional activist. He is the former CEO of Veritas Firearms, LLC and is the co-host of The Patriot News Podcast which can be found at www.blogtalkradio.com/patriotnews. John has written extensively on the patriot movement including 3%’ers, Oath Keepers, and Militias. In addition to the Patriot movement, John has written about firearms, interviewed people of all walks of life, and on the Constitution. John lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and sons and is currently working on a book on leftist deplatforming methods and can be followed on Twitter at @crumpyss, on Facebook at realjohncrump, or at www.crumpy.com.
“bug in the system”? Funny name for a violation of Constitutional Laws.
Law enforcement just got their hand caught in the cookie jar, something for which mere civilians would face criminal proceedings. In this case they’ll just sweep it all under the rug, normal corrupt political operating procedure.
And they wonder why politicians are mistrusted and despised by most people.
the gov’t is using every method possible to create registry’s of firearm owners. Why?, so they have a road map to confiscate your guns. What other use could they have?
PA State police also keep an illegal handgun registry but the AG there won’t enforce the law and order the list destroyed there either. As long as these abuses go unchecked they will continue to spread. It seems the state only enforces the laws they want to enforce and anything else is ignored.
If this doesn’t convince you that laws are meaningless to the other side, I don’t know what will.
Not only is the genesis of this violation important, and the identification of all who created it, but there must be a clear and enforceable order for destruction of all previously transmitted records.
the law not obeying the law…. Humm….
In 1978 I took a seminar in Theory of Law at a very left wing, left coast university. The professor was a well know radical from the 1960’s and made no bones about it. She clearly and repeatedly stated the truth about the Progressive New Left and the law. The law was simply one more means to suppress opposition to the coming revolution. The Constitution was simply a means to its own end. The clowns in the seminar ate this up and then merrily trotted off to second rate law schools to begin their social justice crusades. And so here… Read more »
Isn’t it interesting that they can track the law abiding but can’t find a criminal in the same way?
We all know criminals don’t do anything legal when it comes to buying guns. This is the only reason that gun laws don’t work.
The police are not your friends.
This is the sort of Bravo Sierra that causes revolutions to happen. They’d better quit and delete those illegal records while they can.