The Conversation (0)
Becca Monaghan
Oct 21, 2021
An eight-year-old from Pennsylvania has swapped toys for real-life deadly weapons to showcase on her YouTube channel.
Autumn Fry and her family have been on the road for over a year visiting multiple gun ranges along the way. The eight-year-old has amassed over 160,000 subscribers to her channel, where she is shown testing a variety of guns and flamethrowers as her father comments on her reactions.
Her father, Randy, taught Autumn about guns from a young age and has since branded her an “amazing role model.” He began filming her around a year ago while teaching her about gun safety.
“Children are the future of guns in America and Autumn is an amazing role model for our future,” Randy said.
In a video posted in July, Autumn uses a flamethrower that spits fire for metres. Unfazed, she compared the XM-42 to “a square gun that shoots fire.”
“To start this little guy up, you just turn this little gas nob until you can hear it,” she explained.
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“Spark it up, and turn it on right over here on the side, push this button – this is your trigger,” she said before the flamethrower broke out into blazing flames across the water.
She proclaimed: “Aw, this is such a fun gun!”
“This is really useful for a campfire starter which is what we are about to use it for.”
Autumn’s YouTube channel has racked a staggering total of 12 million views. Inevitably, the eight-year-old’s videos have surfaced on other social media platforms and due to their controversial nature, have caused quite the divide.
One took to Twitter with a clip of Autumn firing two pistols and asked, “What kind of madness is this?”
What kind of madness is this? https://t.co/Ft6IRYhCYv— Mark Slapinski 🇺🇦 (@Mark Slapinski 🇺🇦) 1633149917
@MarkSlapinski Other people see no problem with this 🤷. I can think of many things healthier for a child to do.— Bruce (@Bruce) 1633153434
@JeremiahEXE @MarkSlapinski cool but it still seems wildly irresponsible to give a child that young TWO PISTOLS lol that's just me tho 🤷— BLZ 🔥 (@BLZ 🔥) 1633330425
@MarkSlapinski Mark, you are spot-on with this. It’s both alarming and absolutely pitiful to see this video. She is… https://t.co/x8euoqfuOz— LegitElection2020 (@LegitElection2020) 1633501499
Others, however, slammed critics and said: “Teaching your kids to defend themselves from predators from an early age is not madness.”
Another added, “It’s a skill. And she’s good. Better than sitting in front of an iPad all day eating junk food.”
A Child Access Prevention law (CAP law), sometimes known as the safe storage law, makes it illegal for an adult to keep a gun in a place and manner so that a child can easily access and fire it. And while CAP law is in place in over a dozen states, it is not a federally mandated law.