What would happen if Hansel and Gretel had shotguns? Or the grandmother from Little Red Riding Hood had a hunting rifle?
If you’ve ever wondered what an alternate version of the beloved childhood fairy tales would look like if the characters carried guns, the National Rifle Association has the answer on its NRA family website.
In its latest reimagined fable “Hansel and Gretel (Have Guns)” the gun rights advocacy group teamed up with Amelia Hamilton, a conservative blogger and author, who published an earlier fairy tale with a twist “Little Red Riding Hood (Has a Gun)” in January.
“Hansel and Gretel,” popularized by the Brothers Grimm, tells the story of a starving brother and sister who are abandoned in the woods and stumble upon a house made of gingerbread and candy. Unbeknownst to them a witch lives inside and captures the two siblings before preparing to eat them.
“In my version, they were just going to go explore some different areas of the woods and see if they could come up with something to help feed the family, which apparently is a million times worse than sending your children to starve to death alone in the woods,” Hamilton said earlier this week on an NRA web series.
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In the updated version of the classic tale, Hansel and Gretel “had been taught how safely to use a gun and had been hunting with their parents most of their lives.” As the story continues Hansel and Gretel aren’t in fact captured by the witch, but find two young boys trapped in a cage inside the gingerbread house.
“The boys directed Hansel to the key that would unlock their cage while Gretel stood at the ready with her firearm just in case, for she was a better shot than her brother. Hansel unlocked the cage and opened the door,” Hamilton writes. The story ends with the children escaping to safety and the armed towns’ people led by the sheriff returning to lock the witch away in the cage.
A previous reimagined fairy tale “Little Red Riding Hood (Has A Gun)” released Jan. 14 retells the story where the characters of the grandmother and Red are both armed.
“The wolf leaned in, jaws open wide, then stopped suddenly,” Hamilton write. “Those big ears heard the unmistakable sound of a shotgun’s safety being clicked off. Those big eyes looked down and saw that grandma had a scattergun aimed right at him.”
READ MORE: Pro-gun mom accidentally shot by 4-year-old son in Florida
There have been 11,231 firearm incidents in the United States this year, according to gunviolencearchive.com, a non-profit which tracks shootings online. In 2016, 2,857 people have died with 121 children under the age of 11 being killed or injured, according to the website.
Every town for Gun Safety, a U.S. non-profit that advocates for gun control, says there have been 56 child shootings in 2016 where a person age 17 or younger unintentionally kills or injures someone with a gun.
In Florida, a mother was shot by her 4-year-old boy as they were riding in a pick-up truck last week. Authorities said 31-year-old Jamie Gilt, a self-described pro-gun activist, could face a misdemeanour charge.
Global News reached out to the NRA for comment but did not receive a response
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