Despite a majority of Americans supporting common sense gun laws, Congress did not pass any federal gun laws in 2023. But because the two houses of Congress are so close in terms of party control (e.g., the House is 218–213 in favor of Republicans), changing the mind of just 1–3 representatives could see that impasse disappear. The Shotline fights inaction using AI audio to target every member of Congress with emotional stories told by the voices of actual gun violence victims. Today, a few flipped votes could make the difference between meaningful change and more of the same.

Founded in response to the 2018 Parkland School shooting, Change The Ref and March For Our Lives work in relentless pursuit of gun reform. Today, gun reform is desperately needed: every day in the U.S., 120 Americans are killed by guns. Mass shootings, school shootings, suicides—these horrors are an inescapable part of life for every citizen. In 2023 alone, 43,036 people were killed by guns, while mass shootings rose to their second highest year ever. Polls prove a majority of the population wants sensible gun reform laws, such as universal background checks, yet elected officials refuse to act due to pro-gun lobbying groups with more money to influence them. Despite the appalling number of deaths, not one federal gun law was passed in 2023. One of the most effective ways to combat the lobbying groups and compel elected officials to make change is to pick up the phone and call them, but the problem is that those who have been killed by gun violence have lost their ability to speak out for change. How could we get lawmakers to finally listen? Our answer was to connect Congress directly with the humans behind the statistic by re-creating the voices of shooting victims using AI technology. Each voice was turned into a phone call that demanded change from lawmakers, and could be sent through our interactive online platform, The Shotline. With it, visitors could trigger AI calls to their elected officials and join a national movement for responsible gun reform.

In 2023, the U.S. experienced more than 43,000 gun violence deaths, and an 8% increase in mass shootings over 2020 (a record-breaking year), yet zero federal gun laws were passed. We knew we couldn’t change the law without changing the mind of the lawmakers. To do it, we needed to galvanize action that affected them directly.

To this day, the phone call is still one of the most effective ways of compelling change in Congress. This is especially true if the phone doesn’t stop ringing—the more calls, the better. Putting constant pressure on Congress members makes it impossible for them to ignore their constituents.

We needed to move away from typical awareness campaigns that encourage vocal advocacy, and instead create something directly actionable (i.e., calls to Congress) by giving citizens a tool that made it easier to demand change in a way they’d never seen—or heard—before.

43,036 were killed by gun violence in America last year, while Congress passed 0 gun laws. So, we devised a way for members of Congress to hear directly from those most impacted by their lack of action. Using cutting- edge AI technology, we re-created the voices of shooting victims from across the country. Then we built a website called The Shotline, where anyone in the country could—with just a few clicks—trigger the AI voices to call Congress, share stories of how they were killed, and demand reform. To do it, visitors simply entered their zip code and selected a voice, which would then call their representative. The Shotline makes it simple to flood lawmakers’ phone lines, forcing them to face the true results of their inaction. The Shotline remains active, continuing to add more voices and place calls, until change is made.

In 2023, the U.S. experienced more than 43,000 gun violence deaths, and an 8% increase in mass shootings over 2020 (a record-breaking year), yet 0 federal gun laws were passed. We knew we couldn’t change the law without changing the mind of the lawmakers. To do it, we needed to galvanize action that affected them directly.

To this day, the phone call is still one of the most effective ways of compelling change in Congress. This is especially true if the phone doesn’t stop ringing—the more calls, the better. Putting constant pressure on Congress members makes it impossible for them to ignore their constituents.

We needed to move away from typical awareness campaigns that encourage vocal advocacy, and instead create something directly actionable (i.e., calls to Congress) by giving citizens a tool that made it easier to demand change in a way they’d never seen—or heard—before.

Over the course of three months, we worked with the families of gun violence victims to collect home videos, written accounts, and social media posts of their loved ones. With these resources, we re-created AI voices that accurately captured the personalities and mannerisms of those loved ones, and crafted phone call scripts that reflected the passions, hobbies, and dreams they had when they were alive.

We built a digital platform called The Shotline, where anyone could visit this site to get a sense of who these victims were, hear their AI calls, and—most importantly—easily send those calls to Congress. With just a few clicks and their zip code, people could flood the lines of their representatives.

The Shotline will continue growing, adding more voices of more victims. The voices will continue calling—again and again—mounting pressure on Congress, until gun reform legislation is passed.

Within the first month, the campaign reached +51K social mentions; 1,235 news articles across the country; and +3.6B impressions, all with $0 spent. The campaign was the Apple News Editors’ Pick, becoming a push notification for every single Apple News user in the country. On social media, there was a 22% increase in gun reform conversation the following two weeks after the campaign launched.

Most importantly, we moved people from simply vocally advocating for gun reform into direct action. We drove over +150,000 unique users to The Shotline website in the first 10 days and 83% of those users sent the victim’s phone calls. Over +125,000 calls have been placed to members of Congress so far—reaching every single representative and senator in the United States.