PA Bill Number: HB829
Title: In preliminary provisions, further providing for definitions;
Description: An Act amending the act of April 12, 1951 (P.L.90, No.21), known as the Liquor Code, in preliminary provisions, further providing for definitions;
Last Action: Signed in House
Last Action Date: Jul 3, 2024
I met with my anti-gun state representative. Here's what happened :: 07/06/2019
Due to a new push for civilian disarmament in my state, I decided to do something I've never done before: Personally meet with my state representative to discuss the issues. While getting prepared for this meeting, I found essentially no useful information online. I even contacted the local grassroots group I am a member of, who's monthly newsletter occasionally contains reports of other member's visits, and got nothing useful. Instead, I was sent a list of decades-worn talking points. I already knew my representative would roll their eyes at these given their firm anti-gun leanings. I am writing about my experience to share what I learned by doing, and to hopefully inspire you to do the same.
Key takeaways:
1.) We’re being negatively stereotyped due to our own approach, which hurts our cause.
2.) Don’t assume a representative already knows what's going on legislatively, despite their rhetoric. I was shocked by what mine didn’t know.
3.) Despite being firmly anti-gun, my representative was open and receptive to my proposed solutions, but specifically wanted to understand personal impacts.
I started the process by simply emailing my representative. I sent a polite email stating what I wanted to discuss in a few sentences, and requested an in-person meeting. I decided to be brief in my note to save my talking points for face-to-face. I didn't suggest a meeting location because I did not know how this typically works. In my case, her primary office is in the state capital and she does not have an office in her district. The state capital is hours away. Getting a meeting time (for a one hour slot) and location was harder than I expected. We agreed on an initial time and location a month ago. In the month of waiting, the location was changed twice and my rep was trying to change the time and date all the way up to the hour before the meeting. I kept reminding myself to never attribute to malice what is adequately explained by incompetence, but I got the strong feeling she was hoping I wouldn't stick with it -- hoping I'd give up due to the unstable details.
My suspicions were confirmed when I first met her in a local coffee shop. Before she even greeted me the first thing out of her mouth was, "Oh thank god you're not an old white guy. This might actually be useful." (I am a white millennial.) I already expected this to be a difficult conversation, but the tone was now set.
This brings me to the first takeaway. My anti-gun representative held strong stereotypes about who's opposing her legislative efforts. This gets affirmed by the fact that most pro-gun people who meet with her are "white-haired" (her words) angry men that just rant. Since I didn't know what I was doing, I thought I was over-preparing going into the meeting. I spent several hours thinking through what I wanted to say, wrote up a three page outline I brought with me, and printed out data to support my points from neutral sources. This turned out to be crucial. She said she usually has to take notes, but this allowed her to discuss with me instead. Furthermore, there were multiple cases where she made it clear, in body language or words, that she did not believe my claims until I showed objective evidence. As an example, she did not believe that there was a legitimate use for suppressors until I explained how I use mine and showed her data that demonstrated (1) suppressors are useful for hearing safety but (2) do not make firearms silent. It also turned out to be useful that I was taking a solutions-based approach. Apparently the ranters say what they don't want, but never say what they do want. This is crucial, because anti-gun folks have no idea what gun owners will accept. They really know nothing about us.
Similarly, she went into the discussion assuming gun owners oppose UBCs solely out of stubbornness. She was stunned when I told her that I believe UBCs will lead to a registry and that I personally do not trust her or anyone in government with a gun registry. I walked her through my reasoning. I didn't mention history or previous genocides. I merely described a very simple scenario I thought was likely that ended in confiscation of "assault weapons" enabled by a registry.
This leads me to the second takeaway. Information commonly shared in our circles may not be known or discussed at all in theirs. An example that surprised me: My representative was oblivious to a petition against her legislative proposal. This petition has a large number of signatures and has been covered by most local news sources. While digging into this topic, it became clear that she was also not at all aware of competing proposals to her own. This, in spite of the fact that the counter-proposals are well known and discussed by gun rights folks in my state. This could have been very bad because the counter-proposal accomplishes the same objective she has in a way gun rights folks find acceptable! It was a common theme, as also demonstrated in my previous examples, that she was missing a lot of relevant and important information pertaining to the decisions she makes. We need to do a better job of meeting with our representatives and communicating this information in a manner that won't cause our skeptical audience to stop listening.
Finally, and this shouldn’t be a shocker, but she relaxed as the meeting went on and stated a few times that the majority of the criticism she receives comes from obnoxious Internet trolls which do absolutely nothing to help. She was very appreciative that I was being constructive, and genuinely did not seem to expect that. Additionally, she professed frustration that many of the people complaining do not know who their actual representatives are. She was open to what I had to say, and legitimately wanted to hear it. In particular, she was very interested in hearing about how my family and I would be personally impact by her proposals, and not just general talking points she already gets from lobbyists. It turned out to be very helpful to talk about my family, our history with and personal use of firearms, and how that would be negatively and unnecessarily impacted. I hope in my case this did something to break down existing stereotypes that gun owners are unreasonable, unapproachable, and unnecessarily stubborn.
The experience wasn't exactly comfortable or fun throughout, but in the end I am very glad I did it and will do it again. If you're a younger gun owner that is capable of having a calm conversation with someone that disagrees with you, please schedule a meeting with your representative as soon as possible -- especially if they are anti-gun. We are generally not being heard or represented in this fight!
EDIT: I made r/MeetYourGovernment for others to post advice and stories.
https://old.reddit.com/r/Firearms/comments/c9tjso/i_met_with_my_antigun_state_representative_heres/
