Get the stories that matter to you sent straight to your inbox with our daily newsletter. Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

BLOODY kids, eh ? You’ve got to have eyes in the back of your head. They’re always into something.

You can’t leave the wee buggers alone for a minute or they’re rooting through your purse, playing with matches or, in the case of mother Jamie Gilt, shooting you in the back with a .45 caliber automatic.

The frankly incredible story played out in Putnam County, Florida, last week when Gilt’s four-year-old son got hold of her handgun in the back seat of the car she was driving and shot her through the back of her seat. She survived and is now in a stable condition in hospital.

In a story so heavily laden with irony that it threatened to tilt the Earth off its axis, it transpired that Gilt’s Facebook page is called Jamie Gilt For Gun Sense and that, shortly before the shooting, she had posted a message enthusing about how her son “gets jacked up to target shoot the .22!”

It transpires that Gilt is a raving, passionate gun nut who was often to be found flooding her social media accounts with messages such as “MY RIGHT TO PROTECT MY CHILD WITH MY GUN TRUMPS YOUR FEAR OF MY GUN”.

Except in this case, of course, her gun protected no one. Her own son accidentally shot her with it. I say “of course” because, as anyone with a passing interest in the subject knows, statistics show that in America your gun is far more likely to get you shot accidentally by a family member than it is to be used saving some family member from a burglar, mugger, rapist or any of the other imagined demons in that crazy country with the highest firearm ownership in the world. The demon, more often than not, is likely to be a drunken uncle or a curious child.

Just as I was asking myself, “What on earth was this idiotic woman doing leaving a loaded gun within reach of a four-year-old child?” (I wouldn’t leave a blunt knife or a golf tee within reach of a four-year-old) I came across another chilling American fact. Gilt is now likely to be prosecuted because “Florida statute makes it a misdemeanor for a person to store or leave, on a premise under his or her control, a loaded firearm in such a manner that it is likely a child can gain access to the firearm”.

That’s right – it’s a “misdemeanor”. A minor crime. No big deal.

(Image: REUTERS/Adrees Latif)

It’s like they’re saying, “Hey, no problem. You left a loaded .45 – a handgun so powerful it could put a bullet through a human body from about 100 yards away – within the reach of a toddler who then killed someone with it. It happens. Here, have a few months in jail.”

Over here in Britain, if you’d spent all week posting stuff on Facebook such as “GUNS ARE GREAT” and “GUNS 4 EVAH” and “MY CHILD HAS A GUN AND LOVES IT” and a couple of days later your child shot you with a gun, the shame and embarrassment would be so great that you’d have to emigrate or go and live in John O’Groat’s or something.

(Image: REUTERS)

Over in America, as we all know from stuff like the rise of Donald Trump, they bypassed shame a good while back. They’re all out of embarrassment. So this coming week will undoubtedly see the pro-gun lobby posting stuff online like “IF ONLY THERE HAD BEEN A SENSIBLE FOUR-YEAR-OLD WITH A GUN IN THAT CAR” and “GUNS DON’T KILL PEOPLE, INFANTS DO”.

It seems increasingly obvious that the real infant with a gun here is America itself. Watch it stumbling around like a giant toddler, wreaking untold havoc and then screaming its head off if someone dares to confiscate its beloved toy.

It’s about time someone took the toys away for good.