TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — For more than a year, Florida failed to do national background checks that could have disqualified people from gaining a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

The lapse, revealed in an internal state report, occurred during a period when there was a surge in the number of people seeking permission to legally carry a concealed weapon in the state.

Florida does not allow the open carry of weapons, but more than 1.9 million people have permits to carry guns and weapons in public if they are concealed.

An inspector general’s report, not widely known until Friday, said the state Division of Licensing failed to check the National Instant Criminal Background Check System from February 2016 to March 2017. The report was sent in June 2017 to the agency that oversees the program.

The state ultimately revoked 291 permits and fired an employee who was blamed for the lapse.The Tampa Bay Times was the first to publish information about the report.

Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, a Republican running for governor who has touted his efforts to make it easier for people to obtain concealed-weapons permits, said the state did conduct its own criminal background checks on those applying for permits during that time period.

Putnam blamed the problem on the negligence of an employee in the Division of Licensing, which is part of the Agriculture Department.

The final report issued in June 2017 states that an employee in the Division of Licensing did not run applications through the national system because she couldn’t log into the database. The employee is quoted in the report as saying that she ‘‘dropped the ball.’’

The Times interviewed the employee, Lisa Wilde, who told them she was working in the mailroom when she was given oversight of the database.

‘‘I didn’t understand why I was put in charge of it,’’ Wilde told the newspaper.

‘‘The former employee was both deceitful and negligent, and we immediately launched an investigation and implemented safeguards to ensure this never happens again,’’ Putnam said.

McKinley Lewis, a spokesman for Republican Governor Rick Scott, said the governor’s office was never provided a copy of the inspector general’s report.

Democrats and gun control advocates criticized Putnam over the incident and said he should resign. Putnam has raised the ire of gun control advocates for his proclamation last year that he was a ‘‘proud NRA sellout’’ who supports the National Rifle Association.

He also said that he would not have signed the new gun and school safety law enacted by the Florida Legislature in the aftermath of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.

The state used the national system to see if there were reasons such as mental illness or drug addictions that should prevent someone from being issued a concealed-weapons permit.

But in March 2017 an investigation was triggered after a state employee noted that the state was not getting any correspondence from people whose applications had been rejected due to information gleaned from the national database.