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February 21, 2024
NSSF PROFILE Q&A: U.S. Rep. Tracey Mann (R-Kan.)
Editor’s Note: We are pleased to post the latest of our occasional Q&A features with an elected official who supports hunting and the shooting sports. NSSF thanks U.S. Representative Tracey Mann, from Kansas’s Big First Congressional District. Serving in his second term, Congressman Mann serves on the House Committee on Agriculture, Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and the Committee on Small Business.
1) Who introduced you to hunting and the shooting sports?
Growing up in the Big First District as a fifth-generation Kansan, I have been blessed to bear witness to our state’s rich heritage of hunting and shooting sports all my life. While Kansas boasts world class pheasant, upland game and whitetail deer hunting, just to name a few, hunters need the Second Amendment to remain strong in order to enjoy them.
2) Describe your favorite shooting sports or hunting activity pastime?
Watching my son Austin grow into a young man and develop an interest in hunting and recreational shooting has been a real joy for me. Young people remind me of the importance of protecting our heritage for generations to come. It’s always special for me to spend time with my son in the great outdoors of Kansas.
3) Which piece of pending legislation related to conservation, hunting and the firearm industry is particularly important to you and why?
I introduced the Reining In Federal Licensing Enforcement (RIFLE) Act in response to several ways that the federal government is chipping away at the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens. Specifically, the RIFLE Act would protect law-abiding gun dealers from being forced out of business by the ATF’s overreaching directives like the “zero tolerance policy.” It ensures that ATF properly works with firearm licensees to correct mistakes that were obviously not willful and to appeal an ATF decision before an administrative judge.
I am also pleased to be an original cosponsor of H.J.Res. 44 that would block President Joe Biden’s pistol brace rule which reclassified pistols with stabilizing braces as short-barreled rifles and threatened gunowners who use those braces. Legislation like this protects law-abiding Americans and is a strong signal against any effort to diminish or weaken our Second Amendment rights.
4) What do you see as the challenges and opportunities for hunters and shooting sports enthusiasts?
Ronald Reagan once spoke of the passing down of America’s glorious inheritance and freedoms to the next generation. I believe that when we share the joy of hunting and shooting sports with the next generation, we also do our part in fighting against the federal government’s infringement on the Second Amendment. From firearm dealers to moms and dads teaching their kids to hunt and from hunters to Members of Congress, we must lift up the values that are alive and well in the Big First District of Kansas and across America and push back any efforts that would diminish or weaken the rights of law-abiding Americans guaranteed to us by the Second Amendment. That’s the ultimate challenge – but also the ultimate opportunity, and one we’re called to cultivate as Americans.
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