Gun Nation: The Rise of Child Gun Influencers

Fred Thrasher doesn’t see his children as social media content creators, even if they run in those circles. “They’re not influencers,” he says, firmly. “We’re a foundation.”

The Survival Sisters Foundation is a nonprofit organization that takes families out in rural Georgia and allows them to learn about firearms while using expensive gear they wouldn’t otherwise be able to access. It’s targeted in particular toward girls and women, and runs a campaign called “Don’t Be A Victim” that focuses on preventing domestic violence, child abuse, human trafficking and — perhaps counterintuitively — school shootings.

Still, child gun influencers have been becoming more common over the past five years.

Pink-haired 12-year-old Autumn Fry is one such example: in 2022, aged eight, she posed in RECOIL magazine, clutching a customized assault rifle painted in pink tiger-print, and detailed how she’d first put her finger on the trigger of an automatic weapon with her father on the gun range when she was two years old.

Cheyenne Dalton is now 24 years old but has been a content creator in the firearms space since she was 14; at 17, she was already the subject of media profiles. She now promotes apple cider vinegar capsules on social media alongside semi-automatic weapons and her own branded merchandise.

The 2A Boys are young brothers whose father uploads content of them clutching very large guns, sometimes military-grade. A recent video features their youngest sister, who looks to be three or four years old, being given a handgun by her father and talked through how to handle it as she sports pink ear defenders and points out her pink camo gun range bag, which she was given for Easter. The comments are universally approving: “Six feet, 230lbs and I’m holding back tears, man,” writes one. “She’s so cute, small and precious, makes me wish I had children. This is what life in our country should be.”

All of the above-mentioned influencers are white (The Independent reached out to each one for comment, but none replied.)

Thrasher says that he has to take a more careful approach, balancing his enthusiasm for the space with how he knows American society views Black people. He takes care to make sure that the content the family puts out on social media is positive, that it could never be mistaken for gang content.

That’s one of the reasons, he says, why the logo of the Survival Sisters is still a little girl with a ponytail and a flower, even though his girls are teens and young adults now, with the oldest two heading off to college and the youngest in high school. “Countering the narrative” is always top of mind.

Thrasher didn’t start shooting with his daughters to get clicks, anyway, he adds. He did it because, after he and his wife divorced, he realized he needed a way to bond with his children, and he was raised as a “country boy,” hunting, shooting, fishing and simulating river rescues. Traditionally, he’d been told that that was the purview of little boys. But why shouldn’t it be a way for a father to bond with his four little girls?

— Holly Baxter in From eight-year-old ‘influencers’ to trans anarchists, today’s gun owners aren’t who you think