CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WSAZ) – Some people are getting so fired up over proposed gun legislation, they're taking aim at state lawmakers and threatening their lives.

"It's extremely unfortunate -- they're not promoting their cause by doing that, in fact it has just the opposite effect," said Democratic State Senator Herb Snyder of Jefferson County.

Senator Snyder has been a target for some gun activists and he leads the committee tweaking and working on a gun bill that would stop any city or county from controlling guns.

But recent threats aimed at the senator are so troubling that he turned the e-mails and phone calls over to the police.

"It's extremely counter-productive when you have two senate chairmen that are receiving just blistering calls, some of them threatening, that's not productive," said Snyder.

The biggest threat was one made against his life, saying:

"’If you don't run the bill, you won't come home’ -- that's pretty threatening," said Snyder.

But it doesn’t stop with him, as his kids are even getting nasty messages on Facebook.

This session, Snyder says there have been no bills considered anti-gun and says the threats probably stem from the heated national gun debate.

"I can assure everyone I am not anti-gun, I'm an NRA member and we'll deal with each one of these bills, there's 30-some of them, in the due process that the legislative environment brings to this -- but we have our job to do, just let us do our job and don't threaten us in the meantime."

It is against the law the threaten any political figures. Police are working to trace the emails and phone calls.

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