21. Visiting Your Legislators and their Staff ``FREEDOM EXISTS ONLY WHERE PEOPLE TAKE CARE OF THE GOVERNMENT.'' Woodrow Wilson How to Set up a Meeting Ask for one. If you'll be in the capital city, call and ask to make an appointment. Or call the legislator's hometown office, and ask for an appointment when the legislator is in town. If the legislator just doesn't have room in her schedule, you'll probably be given an appointment with a staff assistant. That's fine too. Don't take the legislator sending a staff assistant to meet you as a personal snub. Legislators have overwhelming demands on their time. It's nearly impossible to get a meeting with a United States Senator, unless you are from a very small state. Your chances of getting an appointment with the legislator herself, or of getting a relatively longer meeting with the staffer, increase if you are making the appointment for a group of people. (Seven people is about the largest practical size for an office meeting.) The comments below refer to meeting with a ``legislator,'' but are equally applicable to other public officials, and to assistants to those officials. Preparation Familiarize yourself in detail with the legislator's voting record on the gun issue. Your NRA state liaison or the CCRKBA staff will usually have the legislator's history on file. Take along a one-page fact sheet, with a concise summary of the issue you want to discuss. Legislators appreciate having arguments boiled down to their essentials, and preparing the fact sheet will help you collect your own thoughts. As you prepare what you will be saying to the legislator, make sure that you have hard facts to back up every single statement you make. If you want to bring more material, to give the legislator as background, bring some editorials or newspaper clippings; write your name and address on the items, so that when the legislator or his staffer reads it later, he'll remember where it came from. Also remember that legislators are in the business of making laws, just as meat factories are in the business of making sausage. So if you tell a legislator that gun control is not the solution to crime, be prepared to be asked if you have any better solutions. Similarly, many legislators understand that gun control won't do a lot of good, but they think it might help a little, and they feel a need to ``do something.'' So be prepared to explain how the particular gun control would not only be ineffective, but would be actively harmful. In addition, legislators want to vote for each other's bills. This is particularly true for legislators of the same party. The desire stems partly from a natural inclination to get along with the people you spend all day with, and partly from the necessity of maintaining friendships to get the legislator's own bills passed. As a result, you need to look for ways to help the legislator protect the Bill of Rights and keep on a positive plane with his fellow legislators. For example, a bad bill can often be fixed with some simple amendments. If you suggest to your legislator that he introduce amendments to a bill--rather than just oppose the bill outright--he can amend the bad bill into a good bill, and can stay on good terms with the bill's sponsor. It's extremely important (and this also applies when you testify before a legislative committee) to read the bill in question thoroughly. Get together all of the pro-rights people who will be attending for a ``pre-meeting'' to discuss the agenda, and map out who will say what. Designate one person as the group leader, who will lead the meeting through the agenda. The visit should be confined to one topic, such as a particular piece of legislation. You should present the legislator with concrete acts you would like him to take (such as cosponsoring a bill). During the Visit BE ON TIME! In fact, plan to be early, thereby leaving time for getting stuck in traffic, lost, etc. The legislator may run on a very tight schedule, and if you're not ready when he is, your meeting may vanish. While you should be early, accept the risk that the legislator may be extremely late. He may be coming from another meeting someplace else, and be unavoidably delayed. Take the lateness in stride, and don't let it spoil your attitude for the meeting itself. Dress in a conservative business suit, or at least a jacket and tie. Legislators are people too, and appreciate friendly behavior just as much as your neighbors and business colleagues do. So start the meeting with a compliment about something the legislator has done that you liked. If you know somebody who knows the legislator, drop the name: ``Eddie Jackalope, one of your campaign volunteers, said to say hello; we live down the block.'' No matter how unhappy the legislator's statements make you, be courteous. Legislators have to vote on dozens of complex issues every week, and they rarely have time to master a single issue in detail. So gear your presentation to the level of an intelligent generalist--someone who may not know a lot about the gun issue, but who has a good ability to pick out the essential facts necessary for a decision. Your basic presentation should take a maximum of five minutes. (The entire meeting may be as short as ten minutes, and will almost never be more than half an hour.) The most important points should be brought up first. The presentation should emphasize the impact that the particular issue would have on the community the legislator represents. Legislators learn how to make decisions in a hurry. Thus, be prepared for direct, challenging questions. Prepare yourself by going over the most difficult questions someone could ask, and coming up with answers. And if the legislator does start throwing you some hard questions, don't get defensive and assume he's an enemy. Asking tough questions may simply be his way of getting to understand the issue. After all, if he supports you, then he'll have to answer ever tougher questions from his anti-gun colleagues. In a legislator's office, just like everywhere else, the most successful talkers are the people who are the best listeners. Pay attention to what the legislator is saying, and give his questions the good answers they deserve. If, instead of talking about the issue at hand, the legislator wanders off the topic of the meeting, bring the topic up again when it's your turn to talk. If the legislator agrees to take the action you want (cosponsoring a good bill, voting against a bad bill, or whatever), give him the praise he deserves, and let him know that folks in his district appreciate his pro-rights stance. If you can't tell what the legislator will do, ask him directly. He may tell you that he hasn't made up his mind--which is a reasonable answer. (And it's also an answer that should trigger additional efforts on your part to influence him later--such as doing everything you can to get other pro-rights people to write him letters). Give the legislator your one-page fact sheet at the end of the meeting. If you give it the legislator earlier, he may focus on the written material, instead of on you. If you're meeting with the legislator on behalf of a local pro-gun group, ask if you can have a quick black & white photo taken of your group with the legislator. (Bring your own camera, flash, and loaded film.) The picture can be used in the group's newsletter, to demonstrate your good relations with elected officials. If by the end of the visit you have not met the legislator's aide who deals with gun issues, ask to be introduced. Afterwards Send your NRA state liaison a note or give him a call to let him know how the meeting went, and where the legislator stands. Whether or not you got the result you wanted during the meeting, follow up by sending a thank-you note for the opportunity to have the meeting. If the legislator hasn't taken action one way or the other in regards to your request, ask specific questions about what she plans to do. This kind of follow-up is very impressive to legislators, because so many concerned citizens don't follow up. When you do follow up, the legislator will take you all the more seriously. Informal Meetings Formal office meetings aren't the only place you can see your legislators. They're likely to be out and about at all sorts of community events, including fairs, receptions, town meetings, civic group meetings, barbecues, and clambakes. Call the legislator's office, and ask what events she will be attending which are open to the public. Even things which you might think are closed--such as a political fund-raising dinner --are usually open to anyone willing to buy a ticket. Federal elected officials have an appointments secretary who keeps track of their calendar; state and local officials usually have one assistant who handles that chore and many others. If you call the legislator's office and talk to the appointments person, they can tell you of upcoming times when the legislator will be in your area. In fact, they'll be glad to tell you, since legislators stay in office by meeting and making fast friends with their constituents. When you know the legislator's next appearance, recruit some friends to go there with you, and give him their own two sentence pro-rights speeches. If the legislator will be at a paid event, such as a political fund-raiser, shell out the money if you can afford it. Besides having the chance for your two-sentence dialogue with the legislator, you can meet lots of other government officials and party volunteers. And when different people at the county fair and the district fund-raiser and the town meeting and the high school talent contest all come up to the legislator and suggest that he support the right to bear arms, he'll get the idea that the gun rights are important to the folks back home. These informal gatherings are not the place to get the legislator alone for a 15-minute discussion on gun control. But they are a good place to introduce yourself, shake hands, and make an acquaintance. The legislator will need to circulate at the gathering, and meet as many people as possible, so your opportunity for dialogue may be as little as one sentence or two. Of course the two sentence can be pro-rights sentences, such as ``Thanks for all your good work, Mr. Cravath; I hope you'll vote against the waiting period bill when it comes up next month.'' Once you're an acquaintance of the legislator, you can write to her on a first name basis, and refer to your previous meeting. (See chapter 15 for the beneficial impact this will have on your letters to the elected official.) If you're interested in setting up an office meeting to discuss an issue, now's the time to set the stage. When you're introduced, ask ``Could I come see you at your office and talk about the waiting period bill?'' The legislator will usually say yes, thereby giving you the opportunity to call her office and ask ``I met Representative Cahill at Democratic Party dinner last week, and she said to set up a time to come see her and talk about the waiting period bill. What would be the most convenient time for her?'' Even though the representative didn't specifically say so, you may end up meeting with a staff assistant, rather than the legislator herself. As discussed above, that's still good.