About

Crying Kid With Gun refers to two stock photos of a toddler crying while holding a gun. The pictures have been used together as a reaction image online for heartbreaking events, usually involving violence.

Origin

The photos were first posted on the picture database Shutterstock by Sergei Dmitrienko, as part of a photo set.^[1] Despite being positioned on the right in the memes, the second photo was actually posted first, on December 2nd, 2014, along with other photos of the same child, either holding a gun or dressing as a superhero; the photo used on the left part of the template^[2] was uploaded on December 3rd, 2014.

Spread

The pictures of the crying child and the gun began seeing use in memes beginning in the late 2010s. On Reddit, a meme posted in the /r/memes by crazycu on September 16th, 2019 with this photoset^[3] received over 15,000 likes in 5 years.

On March 29th, 2020, user spazslackrabbit posted an Animal Crossing example to /r/AnimalCrossing,^[4] gaining over 12,000 likes in 5 years.

Related Memes

African Kid Crying With A Knife

African Kid Crying With A Knife is a double screenshot of Nigerian actor Chinedu Ikedieze crying in the 2008 Nigerian film Intelligent Student. Starting in 2018, this picture was similarly used online as a reaction image.

Various Examples

Template

External References