Rep. Mark Amodei is back in Nevada during Congress' August recess. He spent part of that time driving throughout northern Nevada to talk to constituents in rural parts of the state.

"Just kind of checking in with everybody, saying 'Hey, we're in the neighborhood. If we're working on something for you, here's where we think it is, making sure we're on the same sheet of music,'" Amodei, R-Nevada said.

One of the more heated topics is gun control, following mass shootings in California, Texas and Ohio. Amodei says there is no easy way to curb gun violence, but says he is willing to listen to reasonable legislation. 

"I don't think it will be a silver bullet," Amodei said. "Background is a piece of it, mental health, we've funded a lot of mental health stuff. Especially for younger folks. This red flag now is a new thing. It's like, well tell me about the due process."

According to Gun Violence Archive, there have been 263 mass shootings in 2019, meaning the shooter killed or injured at least four people. Amodei says it is important to reduce that number without infringing on law-abiding citizens' rights.

"If you've got 350 some odd over here who are homicide criminals and you've got two million over here, I don't think you can say the 99.5 or 99.6 percent of people that are perfectly law-abiding, you've got to give up your rights," Amodei said.

Amodei says it is also time to get immigration and border issues under control. He says 30-year old holding facilities are too small to handle the influx of people crossing the southern border.

"You have to regulate the flow of people into your country because quite frankly, it affects schools, it affects public safety, it affects housing, it affects labor, it affects social programs," Amodei said. "If we can just get off being political junkies and wanting to slant everything against whoever the opponent or the other party is, the solutions are out there."

Amodei says he supports legislation that protects DREAMERS, or people whose parents brought them here, illegally as children. He says he recently voted against a bill that would protect them but that it had language that also protected possible criminals.

"The vast majority of DREAMER-eligible people, over a million are phenomenally deserving people," Amodei said. "Whose political idea was it to say 'Oh, you've gotta provide cover for gang members', if you have a conviction for a firearm offense, that can't be used against you."

Healthcare is one of the most important issues to Americans. Amodei says 51 percent of Nevadans get their insurance through their employers and 11 percent do not have coverage. Many are pushing for a single payer system or Medicare for all, but Amodei says he is not willing to kick people off their private insurance plans.

"All those police, fire, city, county, state, union members, teachers associations, people that work for Catholic community services, all those people's plans go away," Amodei said. "Everybody's going to be on the same ship and so I just don't think that case has been made yet. I disagree with that. I haven't been ambiguous about that."

Nevada and the rest of the United States is enjoying the longest economic growth in history, and Amodei hopes to keep the momentum going. Some people predict that a recession is looming but the congressman says there's no way to tell if and when that will happen.

"Nobody can ever say 'Mission Accomplished' on the economy," Amodei said. "The economy is something you've got to get up and you've got to turn that crank every day. You've got to look at unemployment, you've got to look at what's going on with trade, with or neighbors, with China."

Some Nevadans says they are feeling the effects of the trade war with China, especially farmers and ranchers in rural Nevada.

"There's a concern about it," Amodei said. "It's like, listen, if we're producing a product where there's no place to sell it, that's an issue. We've even heard from Canadians because there's a lot of Nevada agri-business that ends up going north to Canada."

Amodei says China is one of the United States' biggest competitor in national security, and the biggest economic competitor. He says the U.S. has ignored what China has been doing for too long.

"What we've been doing basically looks the other way while they steal over a half-trillion dollars for technology through trade practices and currency manipulation," Amodei said. "It's at a bad point but the question becomes 'Are you just going to pretend that it's not there or are you going to deal with it?"'

Nevada recently lost a federal lawsuit over the U.S. Department of Energy's shipments of weapons-grade plutonium from South Carolina to the Nevada Test Site. Amodei says there was a lack of communication on the part of the DOE, and he expects the plutonium to leave the silver state for New Mexico or Texas within a few years.

"There's a lot of moving parts to keep your eye on but the problem will go away as DOE fulfills its commitment to supply plutonium to the Department of Defense for their manufacturing process," Amodei said.

Amodei says Nevada is making strides with several land bills. Naval Air Station Fallon, and Nellis and Creech Air Force Bases are working on expansion. Several other counties and cities have land bills. Amodei says Nevada has a unique opportunity because the federal government manages most of its land.

"There's an opportunity to do some good bipartisan work and kind of clear the deck on local lands bills issues without going out and saying 'Hey, we want to transfer all the federal land to wherever the heck," Amodei said. "The 116th Congress, which ends a year from December might actually be a pretty good congress for Nevada."