Given that the State of Delaware Statistical Analysis Center has provided the following information:
2010
Arrests for Possession of a Firearm by a Person Prohibited 964, convictions on that charge 160, conviction rate 16.6%
2011
Arrests for Possession of a Firearm by a Person Prohibited 1199, convictions on that charge 204, conviction rate 17%
2012
No information currently available.
The stats are not broken down by jurisdiction. My personal guess is that Wilmington has at least 60% of the arrests listed in the stats.
Results of this members simple study. We fail to convict nearly 1000 people per year who are prohibited from gun ownership who have been arrested for possession of a gun. It would appear that the police departments are doing a reasonable job to curb gun violence based on the number of arrests. I can not say the same for the AG's office. The result is that hundreds of convicted felons are eventually back on the street with the ability to go get another gun and if arrested they face only a 17% conviction rate.
The courts and AG's office of Delaware are teaching by personal experience that if you are a criminal arrested with a gun that you are prohibited from possessing you will most likely not be convicted on that charge.
A reasonable person might ask why is the conviction rate so low? The answer seems to be that if convicted on this kind of charge there is mandatory sentencing that would overcrowd the states prison system so we use this charge as a tradeoff for other purposes.
So the final result is that Wilmington is a shooting gallery, the Wilmington Police Department leadership needs to be changed, the CDC needs to come to Wilmington and perform a study and the prison system is not overcrowded. So the news reports shooting after shooting in Wilmington and those who believe what they read in the news print wonder why this is happening while those in power simply standby with the full realization of what needs to be done but building new prisons does not get them re-elected . In the end the fix for the gun violence in Wilmington will be new gun control legislation for all of the citizens of Delaware because that will keep us safe.