Delaware’s gun-control lobby is once again proving that no amount of taxpayer money is ever enough when the goal is to chip away at the Second Amendment. Fresh off the creation of a new Office of Gun Violence Prevention and Community Safety, the same activists are now calling for a special legislative session to funnel even more public dollars into enforcement schemes that treat lawful gun owners like the problem. The timing is telling: with crime data showing that the vast majority of Delaware shootings involve prohibited persons and repeat offenders, the push isn’t about stopping criminals—it’s about building a permanent bureaucracy whose sole mission is to monitor, restrict, and ultimately disarm the law-abiding.
What makes this especially galling is the sleight-of-hand funding mechanism. By demanding a special session, gun-control groups hope to bypass normal budget scrutiny and lock in recurring revenue streams that will pay for expanded red-flag enforcement, more “violence interrupters,” and data-collection programs that treat every Delaware gun owner as a potential statistic. The practical effect is a slow-motion tax on the exercise of a constitutional right: every background check, every training mandate, and every new reporting requirement becomes another line item that honest citizens must subsidize. Meanwhile, the state’s actual violent-crime drivers—failed prosecution, revolving-door bail policies, and a porous border—are left largely unaddressed.
For the broader 2A community, Delaware’s maneuver is a cautionary tale. Once a dedicated office and funding stream are created, they rarely shrink; they metastasize into neighboring states through interstate compacts and federal grant programs. The lesson is clear: every new “prevention” bureaucracy must be met with immediate transparency demands, sunset clauses, and relentless documentation of how much of the money actually reaches at-risk communities versus how much simply funds more restrictions on the people who weren’t committing crimes in the first place.
