“What I am freaked out by is seeing a Dinoaur” – Abby, age 8
“My bigest fear is bears because if you get in thier terotory they will chase you for a long time.” – Benjamin, age 7
“I am afraid of zombies and ber glars” – Abby, age 7
“I em aFRoxAD FoFltM WeReWOLFS” – Tatum, age 6
“I am ufrade of sharks” – Haley, age 6
It’s so hard to understand why some Americans buy weapons for private use. Let alone for their kids!
Dutch photographer An-Sofie Kesteleyn went to America with this very wonder, after seeing the tragic story of a 5-year old boy in Kentucky who killed his 2-year old sister with a practice rifle.
“I really wanted to know what parents and kids thought about having the guns,” she tells Wired. “For me it was hard to understand because we don’t have a gun culture at all. The only people with guns [in the Netherlands] are the police.”
An-Sofie Kesteleyn approached the American families at gun ranges and asked to photograph their kids. Not surprisingly, in the three weeks she spent traveling the country, only 15 families said yes.
In this series “My First Rifle” An-Sofie Kesteleyn shows young children holding their child-sized and often brightly colored practice rifles in their bedrooms – a place Kesteleyn thought would remind us of their youth. She also had each child write down what they were most afraid of, something that they could use the gun to defend themselves against.
