Florida Bill Would Punish Officials Who Use A.I. to Detect Firearms

Cities and counties that use artificial intelligence to scan the public in the hopes of discovering firearms could face severe penalties if a bill proposed by a Florida state senator becomes law. 

SB 562, authored by Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, would create a new first-degree misdemeanor crime punishing officials who use AI with any “camera, video recording, or live-streaming device” to detect firearms in public. 

Today, I filed SB562 which restricts the use of artificial intelligence to detect firearms in public spaces.

Utilizing AI to detect whether a law abiding citizen is carrying a concealed firearm is nothing but a technological infringement upon both our 2nd and 4th Amendment… pic.twitter.com/1SsjM7H3Ti

— Blaise Ingoglia (@GovGoneWild) February 10, 2025

As far as pro-gun bills go, I’m guessing many 2A advocates in Florida would prefer to see the repeal of the post-Parkland gun laws adopted by the legislature like the state’s “red flag” law and ban on commercial gun sales for adults under the age of 21. Scrapping the state’s ban on open carry has also been a priority for groups like Florida Carry over the past few sessions, though the Senate and House have been reluctant to take up the issue despite support from Gov. Ron DeSantis. 

Still, Ingoglia’s bill could definitely help gun owners from being unfairly targeted by police just for exercising their Second Amendment rights. Carrying a gun isn’t automatically a crime in Florida, and the presence of a concealed firearm shouldn’t be cause for alarm, much less a police stop. 

As The Floridian reports, Ingoglia’s proposal was filed just a few weeks after Daytona Beach signed a contract with the AI firm Zero Eyes to put the gun-detecting software to use on dozens of city-owned and operated cameras. 

According to the Daytona Beach News-Journal, the coastal city will enter into a yearly contract with the Pennsylvania company and pay them $15,000 per year. A federal block grant worth $60,500 from the Department of Justice will cover the expense. 

Zero Eyes co-founder Sam Alaimo told The Floridian via phone that he anticipates talking with Ingoglia to pursue a more “common-sense” approach, hoping that the Legislature would keep Florida open to having gun-detection software implemented.

“In the past week, we’ve had multiple arrests in major cities for people brandishing weapons where they should not be,” Alaimo said, noting that his company’s software has allowed for arrests outside an elementary school, a subway platform, and in parking lots. “Anyone who says we cannot do this at scale and do this effectively is mistaken.”

Zero Eyes Software, founded after the 2018 Parkland shooting, only identifies guns out in the open—not concealed firearms or weapons in a holster, Alaimo said. He added that his company has helped with dozens of arrests nationwide and is used across 42 states.

“Our software says, ‘I think it’s a gun,’ and that still-frame image will be sent to our operating center in Philadelphia,” continued Alaimo, a Navy SEAL veteran. “We then have a human in the loop who verifies [it’s an illegal weapon]. We then dispatch it to the local law enforcement and to the institution itself in about three to five seconds.”

To their credit, Zero Eyes is open about the fact that their software doesn’t scan for or is capable of identifying concealed or holstered firearms. But they’re also not the only game in town. The company Evolv, which was recently given a trial run in the New York City subway system, claims it can identify both brandished firearms and concealed guns, and other outfits like Xtract One also boasts about being able to detect concealed firearms. 

If Ingoglia’s bill was aimed specifically at Zero Eyes, then perhaps it would be unnecessary, given that open carry remains illegal (at least for the moment). But the senator is right to be concerned about the use of AI being used to detect individuals who are carrying a concealed firearm in public, and it’s better to proactively address those concerns than to wait for cities to start using AI to identify those folks who are carrying a gun.