How to Contact Your Representatives About an Issue
Calling your representatives is quick and easy - and it can make a difference.
Calling your representative is one of the quickest and easiest things any voter can do to help enact positive change in America. While a single phone call will not likely change a representative’s mind, a flood of phone calls cannot be easily ignored, while an online petition can be easily ignored. This is why it is important to call Representatives before signing a petition.
In Texas, politicians kept on pushing back against Campus Carry and Open Carry. During that time, pro-gun Texans flooded Representatives’ phones to the point where they were sending the calls straight to voicemail. After that happened, both Campus Carry and Open Carry advanced. In Colorado, Representatives were recalled for voting for anti-gun legislation, and the other Representatives did take notice. Everyday people can enact positive change if we band together.
How to contact your Representatives
WhoIsMyRepresentative.com will provide a list of Representatives for a given zip code. Each representative can be contacted by phone, email, and snail mail.
Email is quick and easy, but opinion delivered through email carries less weight than a phone call or snail mail. If time is sensitive for a piece of legislation, calling is the best thing an individual can do. Calling a representative takes less than two minutes. If you don’t want to talk to anyone, you can even call after hours and leave a message on the answering machine.
Remember, when you make this phone call, you will not be talking directly to your Representative – and that’s perfectly fine. You will be talking to a secretary, aide, or intern. Their job is to write down what you want your Representative to vote for. It is absolutely critical to speak calmly and respectfully. If you yell and call them names, you will be hurting the cause and would have been better off not calling. Don’t give the 2nd Amendment community a bad name!
It is perfectly acceptable to inform them you won’t vote for them if they do or do not vote for what you’re calling about. But do not swear at them, call them names, or show any anger in your voice.
What to say to your Representative
The actual phone call can be extremely brief. Simply tell them who you are, what your zip code is, and what you want them to vote for or against. Here’s a sample:
Hi, my name is Brian Purkiss. My zip code is XXXXX. As the Representative’s constituent, I would like you to vote against the recently proposed bump stock bills and oppose all other forms of gun control. Instead, please support National Reciprocity and the SHARE act. If you vote for gun control legislation, I will be voting against you in the next elections.
This informs the person answering the phone who you are, the fact that you live in that Representative district, and what you want them to vote for or against.
Calling all of your representatives can take less than ten minutes and it can make a difference, even in states that aren’t gun friendly.
Written by Brian Purkiss - always a student, sometimes a teacher.
I don't consider myself a competition shooter - I think of myself as a performance pistol shooter. I am all about performing at as high of a level as possible. Towards that end, I am obsessive about learning how to perform. I spend a lot of my life learning from the best across the entire firearms world and even into other areas of performance and other sports. I am a USPSA Carry Optics Grandmaster, currently working towards my second GM title in the Open division.
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