ND Lawmakers Drafting Gun Protection Laws - KXNet - Bismarck/Minot/Williston/Dickinson

Several states have adopted laws and others have introduced legislation to protect gun owners from any potential firearm ban.

North Dakota lawmakers are also ready to draft gun protection legislation.

In a state where hunting plays a large role in recreation, the talk of gun control is especially upsetting.

Just days into the legislative session, it's a topic North Dakotan's are telling their lawmakers to take action on.

Minot Representative Roscoe Streyle is drafting a bill to submit next week.

"We can't stop the feds from doing what they're going to do but what we can do is say that local officials can't help in anyway, investigate, prosecute, therefore the ATF will have to enforce the new law," says Streyle.

Representative Bette Grande of Fargo says, "It's very timely because of discussion on federal level, federal government try to tell us as citizens how they want guns regulated. We as states have those scissions made in our own constitutions. We want to see our constitutional rights upheld."

Representative Keith Kempenich is also drafting a bill that would make every North Dakotan's that has a drivers license a concealed weapon permit holder.

"If you are going to have people pushing extremes on one side, you push extremes on the other side," says Kempenich. 

Several states have already adopted laws to protect gun owners, and 21 states have introduced similar legislation.

"ND always been a gun right state. This is how we've always felt, gun ownership is an inalienable right," says Grande.

Rep. Streyle says, "It's not guns that kill people, it's people that kill people, and I strongly don't believe with taking gun rights away from people."

Wyoming is the latest state to propose gun protection legislation, Representative Streyle says he expects this will be a trend nationwide. 

The three lawmakers say the bills are being drafted based on what they heard from their constituents.

Grande and Streyle are both NRA members.