Just when you think America's gun culture madness can't surprise you any more, it does.

Last week, a five-year-old boy in Kentucky shot his two-year-old sister to death with a loaded rifle that had been left in the family living room. Although accidental shootings of a child by a child using loaded guns found in their family homes are far from uncommon, this particular incident seemed to capture the public's imagination, probably because the rifle the boy used to accidentally kill his sister was his very own "first rifle" designed specifically for use by small children and bought for him by his parents.

It came as a bit of a surprise to me to learn that parents are knowingly and willingly buying firearms for their own children and even more of a surprise that it's apparently legally OK for gun manufacturers to design and market weapons to children. We have strict laws in place that prevent us from giving our five-year-old the car keys so he can drive himself to school, but not to stop us giving the same child a loaded gun to play with?

As it happens, there is a plethora of child access prevention (CAP) laws at both a state and federal level ostensibly designed to keep guns and children apart. But they are so full of loopholes and are so poorly enforced that gun manufacturers have not just been able to circumvent them, they are actively targeting the youth market and luring more, and ever younger, children into the trigger-happy lifestyle. And, it seems, no tragedy, even the shooting of a two-year-old child by a five-year-old child, is consequential enough to reverse the trend.

Every year around 500 children are killed and thousands more are injured in accidental shootings. Just in the past week or so, in addition to the Kentucky tragedy, there has been several incidents of small children, including toddlers, shooting themselves or their siblings with family-owned guns. In Kansas a seven-year-old boy fatally shot himself in the head with his father's semi-automatic hand gun during a family shooting trip. A six-year-old girl in Florida is critically ill after being shot by her 13-year-old brother while they were home alone, and a three-year-old toddler in Arizona fatally shot himself in the face with a gun he found in his grandmother's handbag.

Despite these persistent and avoidable tragedies, the gun industry is not only fighting efforts to oppose stricter access prevention laws that would keep children out of harms reach of guns owned by family members, they continue to shamefully market guns directly to children. Predictably, our lily-livered legislators are making it easy for them.

For example, federal law "prohibits firearms dealers from selling or delivering a shotgun or rifle, or ammunition for a shotgun or rifle, to any person the dealer knows or has reasonable cause to believe is under the age of 18". That seems pretty clear, right? If you believe someone is a minor you are not allowed to sell or deliver a gun to them, including a rifle.

Yet the Crickett "My First Rifle" company that sold the child's rifle (available in pink and blue) that the five-year-old Kentucky boy used to accidentally shoot his sister has been actively and openly marketing their products to children. The company partially disabled their website after the shooting but screengrabs show numerous photos of small children carrying and shooting rifles. Clearly they know, and everybody knows, that the guns they are "selling or delivering" are going to end up in the hands of a person that they have "reasonable cause to believe is under the age of 18" but apparently because the minor child is not the actual purchaser of the gun, that makes it OK.

Cricket and other firearms dealers that cater to children may not be violating the letter of the law, but they are certainly violating the spirit of it, yet our lawmakers have chosen to look the other way.

Meanwhile over in NRAville, just days after the Kentucky shooting, the lobbying group responded with their usual sensitivity and wisdom by brazenly and aggressively marketing guns to young children and even offering a "home defense" course that instructed gun owners to store loaded weapons in their children's bedrooms to "keep them safe".

We shouldn't actually need a law to stop us from granting our children access to deadly weapons that are designed to kill people but if gun enthusiasts are so deluded that they think their children will be safer with a loaded gun in their bedroom, then clearly we need very stringent laws indeed.

A five-year-old shooting a two-year-old with a rifle designed for children should be a definitive enough tragedy to compel lawmakers to act. Sadly, the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that resulted in the deaths of 20 children was a definitive tragedy too, however, and look where that got us.