Matthew Albright

The News Journal

On Monday, Gov. Jack Markell will briefly join a group of gun control advocates who are biking from Newtown, Connecticut to deliver a petition to Congress in Washington, D.C.

"Team 26" is starting from the town where a 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School left 20 young children and six adults dead. The group is calling for universal background checks and laws to ban guns on college campuses.

Markell and Newark Mayor Polly Sierer will ride with the group through Newark before joining them in a 10:30 a.m. rally at the Perkins Student Center at the University of Delaware. House Majority Leader Valerie Longhurst, D-Bear, will also be at the rally; she has called for legislation that would end a rule that allows gun sellers to go ahead with a sale if the federal government doesn't process a background check after three days.

Both Markell and Longhurst are avid cyclists.

Team 26 will be the second national gun-control group to visit Delaware in the past few weeks.

On March 29, former U.S. Rep Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, former astronaut Mark Kelly, visited Wilmington to announce the creation of a new gun control advocacy organization, the Delaware Coalition for Common Sense.

Giffords was shot in the head in a 2011 rampage in Tuscon, Arizona that killed six and injured 13.

Contact Matthew Albright at malbright@delawareonline.com, (302) 324-2428 or on Twitter @TNJ_malbright.

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