A 3-year-old California girl accidentally shot and killed her two year old brother after finding a pistol under her parents' bed.
Police said the children's mother was in another part of the apartment when the shooting took place Wednesday, and their father was at work. The boy, who was shot with a .45-calibre semi-automatic handgun, was pronounced dead at a local hospital.
According to the US centres for disease control, American children 14 or younger are nine times more likely to die in a gun accident than children in Britain and 24 other industrialised nations combined. In 2006, at least 32 American children three years old or younger were killed with firearms, according to the agency.
In the past six weeks, a 3-year-old Chicago boy was shot in the chest and killed at a relative's home in what officials called a homicide, a 2-year-old Jacksonville, Florida boy was accidentally shot in the stomach by a teenager who was showing off a handgun to a friend and thought it was unloaded, and a 2-year-old Milltown, Indiana girl shot herself in the head with a gun she found in her parents' bedroom.
An estimated one in ten American households with children contains a loaded firearm, and conservative fears that President Barack Obama harbours secret plans to restrict gun ownership has provoked an increase in new firearm and ammunition purchases since his election. The FBI says that since November more than seven million people have applied for criminal background checks in order to buy weapons.