A threeyearold girl in Texas, United States, accidentally killed her oneyearold sister with a semiautomatic handgun, police said late Sunday, in yet another tragedy linked to the proliferation of firearms in the United States.
During a family reunion, the two children stayed for a while in a room in their home in Harris County, where the city of Houston is located, without adult supervision.
Then the younger sister “gained access to a loaded semiautomatic pistol. Family members heard a gunshot, rushed into the bedroom and found the fouryearold girl dead on the floor,” Harris Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said.
The child died on the spot.
“Apparently unintentionally,” the official added. “This appears to be a new tragic story in which a minor pulls a gun and injures someone.”
The United States has about 400 million guns, more than its 330 million people. One in three adults owns at least one gun and almost one in two lives with one in a household.
According to the Archives of Gun Violence, the country recorded more than 44,000 firearmrelated deaths last year, half of them from suicide and the other half from homicide, accident or selfdefense.
Shootings were a leading killer of under18s last year in the United States, with nearly 1,700 cases, including 314 children under the age of 11, according to the same source.
- Guns were the leading cause of death for children and adolescents in the United States in 2020