Winfield resident shocked by Kansas lawmaker’s response to her plea for gun safety

Spoon began her email to lawmakers, sent late Thursday, by explaining that she was writing “with a heavy heart and deep frustration” about a mass shooting in her south-central Kansas town of about 12,000 people. Last week, her next-door neighbor shot and killed his wife and their four children before killing himself.

Her email referenced the “critical gaps” in state laws that allow individuals like her neighbor, who have a documented history of violence, to obtain and possess firearms. She urged lawmakers to consider policy changes, such as mandating universal background checks on all gun sales and transfers and considering “threats of violence as a rationale for a warrant, search and removal of guns from a household.”

Wilborn, a McPherson Republican who didn’t seek reelection this year, replied to Spoon, and everybody else, early Friday.

“You folks never miss an opportunity, to promote your gun shaming hypothesis,” Wilborn wrote. “More people are killed by illegals with a criminal record. Please spare me.”

Kansas Reflector interviewed Spoon after obtaining a copy of the email exchange. She hadn’t yet seen Wilborn’s reply, and read it before answering questions.

“I’m a little shocked to be honest because there was no compassion, no empathy, no nothing,” she said. “You know, when you start an email out that says, ‘you people’ — he doesn’t know me. I tried to write the most logical, sensible email that I possibly could muster, and immediately he went to ‘you people’ and ‘immigrants shoot more people in the United States than anybody else.’ So there was nothing there. I mean, he apparently is somewhat void of compassion.”

“I think he’s wrong,” she added. “Statistically, I don’t think he has a leg to stand on.”

U.S. Customs and Border Protection data show between two and 62 “criminal aliens” have been convicted of homicide or manslaughter nationwide each year for the past 10 years. Research by the gun-safety advocacy group Everytown shows 70 women are shot and killed by an intimate partner every month.

Wilborn didn’t respond to a voicemail or email from Kansas Reflector seeking comment on his fact-challenged response.

Spoon said she has guns in her house — “most people do” — and just wants to live in a safe community. She said she is a longtime registered Republican but now considers herself to be “left-leaning.”

“I’m not advocating that we just randomly go take guns away,” she said, but she wants her community to be safe.

She said it had been 123 years since the last mass shooting in Winfield.

“To be quite honest, there’s something that happens inside you when a mass murder happens 20 feet away from your home,” Spoon said.

Rep. Mari-Lynn Poskin, a Leawood Democrat and gun owner, said Spoon’s email “was so thoughtful and well written,” and that she was “taken aback” by Wilborn’s response.

“It really surprised me because I think of Rep. Wilborn as a kind and conscientious person, and I’ve never known him to be disrespectful,” Poskin said. “But I felt that it was very disrespectful, particularly given the tenor of the sender’s email.”

Rep. Jo Ella Hoye, a Lenexa Democrat and gun owner who previously led the state chapter of Moms Demand Action, said the shootings in Winfield show the need fore stronger laws “to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people.”

“Unfortunately,” she said, “over the past few years, the Legislature’s actually been weakening our gun laws.”

She pointed to House Bill 2058, passed in 2021, as an example. Lawmakers at the end of the session expanded the scope of that bill to lessen the prohibitions on owning a gun for some people convicted of violent crimes. That policy came from a Senate bill favored by Attorney General Kris Kobach that hadn’t received the support of a committee in either chamber.

Wilborn, who was in the Senate at the time, voted to pass HB 2058 and again to override the governor’s veto.

Hoye said she hasn’t seen data regarding Wilborn’s claim that “more people are killed by illegals with a criminal record.” She said a lot of domestic violence is homegrown.

“The continuous weakening of our gun laws would make it easier for any criminal to get a gun, whether they’re documented or undocumented,” she said.

Spoon said she was aware before the shooting that her neighbor, Ronald Williams Sr., was a registered sex offender and convicted felon. She said she was aware that he was capable of violent crime, based on police calls to the house and interactions people had with Williams in the community.

“The fact that Kansas has loopholes in gun laws that allow felons to have guns in their possession just doesn’t really make sense to me, especially when they have particularly violent personal crimes,” she said.

“I don’t know what the answer is,” she added. “I’m not a legislator, you know. I’m speaking from my heart and what goes through my head and trying to make sense of what happened 20 feet away from my side door. It’s disturbing.”