08/21/2026
Winfield resident Lisa Spoon emailed every member of the Kansas House to start a conversation about loopholes in state law that allow people convicted of violent crimes to own a gun.
Instead, she received a reply from Rep. Rick Wilborn that she views as “void of compassion.”
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 fi****ms. 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.”
