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DOVER — We hope you’ll enjoy today’s edition, and we hope that it will inspire you to participate in the debate on the minimum wage or one of the other public issues covered within these pages. Today’s Opinion section covers three pages and features the insights and opposing views of lawmakers and concerned citizens. Do you believe a $2/hour increase (implemented over the course of four years) will benefit or hurt our economy? The conversation is timely and meaningful since the state’s House of Representatives will take up the issue in the coming weeks. 
“It focuses on one area of the national gun debate that has drawn rare bipartisan agreement – the need to crack down on the ability of domestic abusers to obtain or possess firearms,” the Associated Press said in an advisory a few days ago. “More than a dozen states have passed such measures in the last two years.” Among the measures is a Delaware law, signed in October 2015 by Gov. Jack Markell, clarifies procedures for relinquishing a weapon to police and expands the definition of misdemeanor crime of domestic violence to include “substantive dating relationships” and people who lived together at the time of the offense or within three years of an offense. The Associated Press combed through FBI data to come up with state-by-state statistics. From 2006 to 2014, there were 18 domestic abuse victims of gun violence in Delaware. Breaking it down: Nine wives, three husbands, five girlfriends and one ex-husband. Last May, U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, a victim of a shooting in Tucson, Ariz., was in Dover to support the legislation. “Dangerous people with guns are a threat to women,” she said at the time. “Criminals with guns, abusers with guns, stalkers with guns, that makes gun violence a women’s issue.”
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Today’s edition also includes an interesting national look at the issue of gun violence in domestic abuse cases.
“It focuses on one area of the national gun debate that has drawn rare bipartisan agreement – the need to crack down on the ability of domestic abusers to obtain or possess firearms,” the Associated Press said in an advisory a few days ago. “More than a dozen states have passed such measures in the last two years.” Among the measures is a Delaware law, signed in October 2015 by Gov. Jack Markell, clarifies procedures for relinquishing a weapon to police and expands the definition of misdemeanor crime of domestic violence to include “substantive dating relationships” and people who lived together at the time of the offense or within three years of an offense. The Associated Press combed through FBI data to come up with state-by-state statistics. From 2006 to 2014, there were 18 domestic abuse victims of gun violence in Delaware. Breaking it down: Nine wives, three husbands, five girlfriends and one ex-husband. Last May, U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, a victim of a shooting in Tucson, Ariz., was in Dover to support the legislation. “Dangerous people with guns are a threat to women,” she said at the time. “Criminals with guns, abusers with guns, stalkers with guns, that makes gun violence a women’s issue.” ***
Last Sunday’s edition had an interesting story about the increase in applications for permits to carry concealed deadly weapons. Readers likely see in our newspaper the legal notices that are one of the requirements to get the permit. Spotting the trend, we decided to look into it and found that permits from 2014 to 2015 were up 56 percent. On Monday, we received a bit more data from the state about the permits. In 2015, there were 2,614 concealed carry permits. But the total was far less than 2013 when there were 2,954. The majority of those were in the four months following the December 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Conn. In 2006, Delaware had just 636 concealed carry applications.***
A few weeks ago, this column mentioned the Republicans in the presidential primary field and reminisced about past visits from Donald Trump and Ben Carson to Dover. Thinking about the Democrats, this editor remembers Hillary Clinton making a couple of visits to Delaware years ago. But we only recall one stop in Dover. Thumbing through some old editions a few days ago, I stumbled across a story on Hillary Clinton’s April 1999 visit to Dover Air Force Base. She was here to call attention to the Air Force’s relief missions to Albania to aid thousands of Kosovo refugees. It still remains to be seen whether any of the presidential hopefuls will show in Delaware this year. The primary is April 26.***
Likely, you have an opinion or two after reading today’s Delaware State News. If so, share it with us. Email a letter to the editor to newsroom@newszap.com or use the form in the Opinion section at DelawareStateNews.net. The keys to a great letter are to focus on public issues — especially local ones — and to be timely, clear and concise. Don’t worry about the writing so much. Our copy editors do excellent work in polishing prose and fixing typos.***
And, finally, for a prediction on tonight’s Super Bowl … Broncos 31, Panthers 27Keywords
politics, minimum-wage
