PEOPLE.com on Thursday printed the phone numbers, email addresses and Twitter handles of every single voting member of Congress — that’s 535 lawmakers — to urge its readers to make their voices heard about gun control in the United States.
The powerful display comes one week after another mass shooting pushed gun control into the national spotlight once again. A shooter killed nine people, including himself, at a community college in Oregon — prompting a visually frustrated President Obama to respond during an address from the White House briefing room that “we have become numb to this.”
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Obama urged the country to do something about it. “This is not something I can do myself,” he said last Thursday, stressing that we must work together to change gun laws.
Obama has made a statement about gun violence in the wake of a mass shooting 15 times since he took office; there have been 45 school shootings in 2015 alone.
“I would ask the American people to think about how they can get our government to change these laws and to save lives, and to let young people grow up. That will require a change of politics on this issue,” Obama said. “If you think this is a problem then you should expect your elected officials to reflect your views.”
PEOPLE is helping its readers connect with Congress by posting the contact information in their print and online editions. The magazine’s editorial director Jess Cagle wrote in the editor’s letter of the latest issue about the horrific shooting that took place at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon.
“As a country we clearly aren’t doing enough, and our elected officials’ conversations about solutions usually end in political spin,” Cagle wrote. “We need to know that our representatives in Washington, D.C., are looking for solutions and not giving up.”
