Gun girls of America: Innocent faces. Pink rifles. After that horrific shooting by a 9-year-old, children in grip of a nation's troubling obsession
A US gun company sells 60,000 rifles a year for children between 4 and 10
The Crickett firearm is sold in a 'My First Rifle' range of guns
To match their skirts, flipflops and everything else in their doll-filled bedrooms, the girls have theirs in pink. The boys, of course, choose blue.
But these are not toys, they are real guns — a U.S. gun-maker’s range of .22 calibre, single-shot rifles marketed for young children.
The ‘youth model’ of the Crickett firearm, which is sold in a ‘My First Rifle’ range, are snapped up by American parents enthusiastic to introduce children to the joys of gun ownership. The youngest of the gun-toting girls pictured here is just six, the oldest eight.
These portraits of children taken in their homes provide a disturbing insight into U.S. gun culture, a highly controversial subject that was reawakened this week by the fatal shooting of an instructor as he taught a nine-year-old girl to fire an Uzi submachine gun.
Charles Vacca, 39, was accidentally shot in the head during a ‘Bullets and Burgers’ day at an outdoor range called The Last Stop in Arizona. He was standing next to the child, who was wearing pink shorts and a braided ponytail, as she fired the lethal weapon in single-shot mode before he told her to switch it to automatic.
His last words, captured on video by her parents, were: ‘All right, full auto.’ The recoil from the gun — which is notorious for rising as it fires — made it jerk back in the girl’s hands, shooting her instructor in the head.
The range is one of many throughout America that allow children as young as five to shoot .22 rifles under supervision. Other ranges even offer children’s party packages.
Many appalled Americans castigated the girl’s parents for putting such a lethal firearm in her hands, but Arizona prosecutors refused to blame them, saying Mr Vacca was guilty of negligence for failing to keep his hand on the gun and was responsible for his own death.
9-year-old girl accidentally kills shooting instructor with Uzi
An almost identical lethal accident happened six years ago. Eight-year-old Christopher Bizilj was firing a 9mm micro Uzi at pumpkins at a gun fair in Massachusetts. The gun kicked back and the boy shot himself in the face and died.
Only one state took any action as a result of the boy’s death. Connecticut adopted a law banning anyone under 16 from handling machine guns at shooting ranges.
The latest tragedy comes just a month after a new report highlighted the growing number of accidental gun deaths among children.
The report, compiled by groups campaigning for tighter firearms controls, claimed that almost two children are killed on average in the U.S. every week, mostly at home.
Belgian photographer An-Sofie Kesteleyn took these shocking portraits after being horrified by a news report about a boy of five accidentally shooting dead his two-year-old sister with a Crickett rifle in Kentucky.
Safety campaigners condemn lax regulation of 'gun tourism'
She visited gun shops and ranges to find her subjects and said they were given the rifles by enthusiastic parents: ‘I got the feeling the parents were more into it than the kids,’ she says.
‘The adults were big gun users and wanted the children to learn how to shoot. I thought it was weird.’ She also asked the children what they were scared of that made them want guns.
The Cricketts cost from $150 to $225 (£90 to £135) — considerably cheaper than the latest video games consoles — and are sold by a company in Pennsylvania called Keystone Sporting Arms. It sells around 60,000 a year, according to its website, which calls them ‘quality firearms for America’s youth’.
It says the pink models have ‘brought more young women to the sport of shooting than ever before’. Matching pink gun cases are available.
The website adds that the Crickett rifle is ‘ideally sized for children four to ten years old’.
Miss Kesteleyn said the children she photographed were from responsible, well-off or middle-class families.
The Crickett website says: ‘Warning: like all firearms this rifle should only be shot by a minor with adult super-vision at all times.’ But that was not enough to stop tragic accidents.