WARNING: DISTURBING CONTENT

WHEN it comes to guns, it seems there is no crime shocking enough to persuade the citizens of the United States to part with their right to bear arms.

Doesn’t matter if it’s a two-year-old plucking a pistol from her mother’s open handbag and shooting her dead in a department store or a middle-aged man opening fire at a movie premiere, Americans seem unable to make the link between such tragedies and their own lax gun laws.

This chilling video of two very young siblings playing with a large revolver is another example of that nation’s bizarre love affair with these killing machines.

There are moments in the footage that would cause most Australians to catch their breath, but which make the unidentified adult filming the pair simply chuckle.

It is not clear whether the gun is real or a replica but that doesn’t diminish shock factor when the little girl, who cannot be more than three or four years old, removes and reloads the gun cartridge with disturbing skill before jabbing the weapon into her baby brother’s stomach.

“I’m going to shoot you,” she teases as the irritated tot attempts to wrestle the “toy” from her. The man suggests she pacify him by letting him hold it.

Instead she tells him: “You gotta fix it”.

“What’s wrong with it?” he asks.

“It needs bullets,” the girl replies.

She then turns the gun on the camera, telling the adult to hold his hands up.

There are close to 1000 comments on the video, which was uploaded to Live Leak on Monday. Many of them express outrage at the spectacle of tiny children playing with a gun for entertainment’s sake but a good deal more crack racist jokes, make fun of the toddler’s weight or declare the gun clearly fake and therefore harmless fun.

What do you think of the video? Harmless or a tragedy waiting to happen? Tell us in the comments section below.