www.crickett.com

Young target shooters and hunters pose with their guns on the "Kids Corner" web page of Crickett, a line of rifles made for kids.

The gun was small and light, the training wheels of firearms. The .22-caliber, single-shot Crickett rifle turned deadly on Tuesday, officials in Kentucky said, when a 5-year-old Cumberland County boy shot and killed his 2-year-old sister in what the coroner described to a local paper as “just one of those crazy accidents.”

The toddler was shot when the boy was playing with the rifle, as Kentucky state police said in a statement. The gun, a type of rifle made specifically for kids, had been given to the boy as a gift last year and kept in a corner, and the family did not realize a shell was in the chamber, Cumberland County Coroner Gary White told the Lexington Herald-Leader.

The Crickett is one of two lines of .22-caliber rifles for kids manufactured by the Pennsylvania-based Keystone Sporting Arms. The company acquired the maker of the similar Chipmunk rifle in 2007, a purchase that positioned the company as “the leading rifle supplier in the youth market,” according to the company’s website.

On the site’s “Kids Corner,” young target shooters and hunters pose with their guns, and videos on the company’s YouTube channel promote the gun as fun for the whole family.

Keystone Sporting Arms, which says on its website that it made 60,000 rifles in 2008, did not return requests for comment from NBC News.

Firearms made for minors represent a new market for gun makers, said Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center. As the gun market has been saturated, Sugarmann said, gun makers have followed a “path trailblazed by a wide range of other industries, particularly the tobacco industry, and focused its efforts on women and children.”

Keystone Sporting Arms

Pennsylvania-based Keystone Sporting Arms manufactures and markets rifles for children. They are "the leading rifle supplier in the youth market," according to the company's website.

Yet despite the availability of triggers for tiny fingers, gun makers and marketers are hesitant to actually spell out what age a child should be before handling his or her first firearm, said Sugarmann. Crickett's website, for instance, makes no references to appropriate age ranges for their child-sized weapons.

“There’s a recognition that the majority of the American public has concerns about putting guns in the hands of children,” he said.

Through studies and promotional materials, some sporting associations encourage young people to take up hunting and shooting as recreational activities, and point to potential benefits -- both for avid gun-owners and youths themselves -- of young people handling firearms.

A study conducted on behalf of the Hunting Heritage Trust and the National Shooting Sports Foundation in January 2012 asked young people ages 8 to 17 about how they viewed hunting and target shooting. A 385-page report on the telephone survey said the results were clear: Young people who were exposed to hunting and shooting were more likely to have a positive view of those activities.

“The focus groups also revealed substantial willingness among youths to introduce their friends and peers to activities that they themselves participate in and enjoy,” the report concluded. “This tendency must be encouraged among youth hunting and shooting ambassadors, as introduction through direct involvement and experience represents the most effective recruitment strategy.”

“Junior Shooters” covers the recreational use of firearms by young people, publishing about two or three issues a year since 2007. Available for download online, the magazine features articles written by adults as well as shooters as young as 10, alongside ads from firearms makers including Glock and Heckler & Koch.

“The perspective is you can be involved in the shooting sports, you can have a gun, you can have a career, you can go to the Olympics, you can represent the United States, and you can still do it safely,” said editor-in-chief Andy Fink.

The magazine prints about 30,000 copies per issue, Fink said.

“Each person who is introduced to the shooting sports and has a positive experience is another vote in favor of keeping our American heritage and freedom alive,” Fink wrote in the winter 2012 issue of "Junior Shooters," above a warning that the sale, possession, or transport of gun products shown in the magazine may be regulated. “They may not be old enough to vote now, but they will be in the future.”

Under federal law, children under 18 cannot buy guns themselves. Regulations on how children access firearms and who can be held negligent for a child’s use of a gun is left to the states, said Lindsay Nichols, attorney at the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

“Kentucky has certain laws to prevent children from gaining access to handguns, but those laws don’t apply to rifles or shotguns,” Nichols said.

The mother of the two young Kentucky children was home when the shooting happened and had stepped outside for a minute when she heard the soft pop of the fatal gunshot, said Kentucky State Police spokesman TFC Billy Gregory.

“Federal law prohibits the sale of a gun to anyone under 18, so that means that the child couldn’t be the actual purchaser, but you could, and it’s completely legal, for an adult to buy a gun for a child as a gift,” said Nichols. The adult purchaser would undergo a background check if the gun is bought from a federally licensed firearms dealer, such as at a gun store.

In its spring 2012 edition, “Junior Shooter” ran a separate NSSF-backed report that claimed that “hunting with firearms is one of the safest recreational activities in America.” The report said that a person is 11 times more likely to be injured playing volleyball and 34 times more likely to be injured skateboarding than hunting.

Almost 1,500 children under the age of 18 die every year as a result of shootings, according to the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.

National statistics on how many young people are shot a year are often unreliable, said Daniel Webster of the John Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, due to state-by-state differences in how shooting incidents are reported.

“Unfortunately national estimates on how many children accidentally kill one another with firearms are unreliable, as states vary in how they code these deaths,” Webster said in an email. “State A may code an incident as a homicide, whereas State B will code the same type of incident as an accidental shooting.”

It is “a little premature” to say whether charges will be pressed in the death of the young Kentucky girl, state police spokesman Gregory said. The investigation remains open.

 Related:

• Five-year-old boy accidentally shoots, kills sister
• Toomey: Background check plan failed because of Republican politics
• Support soars for tougher gun laws, surveys show

A 5-year-old Kentucky boy who received a .22-caliber rifle as a gift accidentally shot and killed his 2-year-old sister on Tuesday, according to state police.

The toddler was shot at just after 1 p.m. local time on Lawson’s Bottom Road in Cumberland County, police said. The girl was taken to Cumberland County Hospital and later pronounced dead.

The mother of the two children was at home at the time of the shooting, Cumberland County Coroner Gary White told the local newspaper, the Lexington Herald-Leader. He said that the family did not realize that there was a shell inside the gun. The firearm was kept in a corner, he said.

“It’s a Crickett,” Cumberland County Coroner Gary White told the paper. “It’s a little rifle for a kid.”

“The little boy’s used to shooting the little gun,” White said.

The shooting occurred while the boy was playing with the rifle, police said. It was “just one of those crazy accidents,” White told the Herald-Leader.

Related:

• Gun vote stirs passion at Ayotte town hall meetings
• Pro-gun billboard featuring Native Americans causing controversy in Colorado
• NRA threatens to punish lawmakers on gun control vote despite deal

Jamie Brokaw was an experienced navigator who was no stranger to dangerous flying situations and had the skills to stay cool in the face of danger, according to close friend Chris Connerton.

"He was a very good person and very smart person," Connerton told The Associated Press by telephone from Rochester, Minn.

Brokaw, 33, of Monroe, Mich., was among seven Americans killed Monday when their National Air Cargo plane crashed near an Air Force base in Afghanistan. Six of the victims were from Michigan and a seventh was from Kentucky, said Shirley Kaufman, National Air Cargo vice president.

Connerton said Brokaw was a key reason he was able to make it through flight school in Jacksonville, Fla., where they met.

Connerton also described a harrowing flight two years ago from Toledo, Ohio, to an international flight expo in Lakeland, Fla. Connerton said ice had built up on the plane to the point that he could no longer get it to climb.

"If it wasn't for Jamie's navigation and know-how ... we wouldn't have made it," Connerton said.

Killed along with Brokaw in the Afghanistan crash were Gary Stockdale, 51, of Romulus, Mich.; pilots Brad Hasler, 34, of Trenton, Mich., and Jeremy Lipka, 37, of Brooklyn, Mich.; first officer Rinku Summan, 32, of Canton, Mich.; loadmaster Michael Sheets, 36, of Ypsilanti, Mich.; and maintenance crewman Timothy Garrett, 51, of Louisville, Ky.

Building model planes and working on real ones comprised Stockdale's passion, filling the family's basement with models in his youth, jumping into aviation as a career at age 16 — and later working at two Detroit-area airports.

Stockdale also knew the dangers of flying, his older brother said Tuesday.

"He always said it was dangerous," said Glenn Stockdale, 55. "He would always say, 'You either will die in a car crash or a ball of flame in a plane.'"

AP / Courtesy Stockdale Family

Gary Stockdale, 51, of Romulus, Mich., was killed in a cargo plane crash on Monday.

Lipka had flown in Iraq as well as Afghanistan and had close calls before, said his stepfather, Dave Buttman.

"There was risk there all the time. He knew the risks. He volunteered to take the trips," Buttman told the Star Tribune of Minneapolis. "Basically, you're taking your chances flying in there and he was just happy to be one of the pilots to do it."

The Dubai-bound Boeing 747-400 — operated by National Air Cargo — crashed just after takeoff Monday from Bagram Air Base around 11:20 a.m. local time, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a statement Tuesday.

The accident site is within the perimeter of Bagram Air Base.

The Taliban quickly claimed responsibility for downing the plane, but NATO said the claims were false and there was no sign of insurgent activity in the area at the time of the crash.

The Afghanistan Ministry of Transportation and Commercial Aviation is leading the investigation. The NTSB is investigating the crash alongside the ministry. The team will be composed of three NTSB investigators, as well as representatives from the Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing, the NTSB said.

Kaufman said the plane — owned by National Airlines, an Orlando, Fla.-based subsidiary of National Air Cargo — was carrying vehicles and other cargo.

Elena Garrett, of Jeffersonville, Ind., just across the Ohio River from Louisville, said ex-husband Timothy Garrett would have turned 52 on Saturday. They have two daughters together, ages 11 and 12.

"We're all devastated," Elena Garrett said about his death. "We were still best friends. He's the best father I've ever seen (and) ready to help anybody. He would give the shirt off his back for anybody."

Bill Hasler said his family learned Monday morning that his brother, Brad, was one of the crash victims.

"Brad was a wonderful father to two young children, a beloved husband to a wife who is expecting another child, a loving son, and the most loyal and supportive brother I could have ever asked for," Bill Hasler said in a statement. "His influence in the lives of all of us who loved him is immeasurable, and our grief is indescribable."

National Airlines was based until recently at Michigan's Willow Run Airport, west of Detroit. It carries cargo both commercially and for the military, Kaufman said. She said the company employs about 225 people.

Summan had worked 2½ years for National Air Cargo, said his wife, Rajnit Summan.

Rajnit Summan said she last spoke to her husband Sunday.

"I told him to be safe," she said.

This story was originally published on Wed May 1, 2013 4:31 AM EDT

John Sommers / Reuters

Ordaining Bishop Bridget Mary Meehan (C) presents Rosemarie Smead (R), a 70-year-old Kentucky woman, to the audience after she was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest during a Celebration of Ordination at St. Andrew's United Church of Christ in Louisville, Kentucky April 27, 2013.

A dissident Roman Catholic group ordained a 70-year-old woman a priest in Louisville, Kentucky, during a ceremony attended by hundreds on Saturday.

About 150 women from all over the world have been ordained in defiance of the Roman Catholic Church that bans them from becoming priests.

Rosemarie Smead will be starting her own congregation and she told Reuters she is not worried about being excommunicated.

"It is a medieval bullying stick the bishops used to keep control over people and to keep the voices of women silent,” she said. “I am way beyond letting octogenarian men tell us how to live our lives."

Smead, a former Carmelite nun with a bachelor's in theology and a doctorate in counseling psychology, wept throughout the ceremony.

According to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, seventy percent of U.S. Catholics believe women should be allowed to be priests.

In a statement last week, Louisville Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz called the planned ceremony by the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests a "simulated ordination" in opposition to Catholic teaching.

"The simulation of a sacrament carries very serious penal sanctions in Church law, and Catholics should not support or participate in Saturday's event," Kurtz said.

Reuters contributed to this story

Bill Estep / The Lexington Herald-Leader via

This photo shows the charred remains of a Gray, Ky., home after a fire erupted, Saturday, March 9.

GRAY, Ky. — As flames engulfed a small house in rural southeastern Kentucky, Gino Cima raced to the scene to try to save his nephew, his nephew's fiancee and the five children inside. The drive in the tiny town of Gray took just minutes, but family members said Sunday that Cima was too late — he reached a side door as the fire raged and pulled out the bodies of the two adults.

"Hey, there's babies in there, there's babies in there!" Gino Cima screamed to firefighters, according to his wife, Laura, who also was at the scene.

The fire killed all seven people in the ranch-style home Saturday. Officials on Sunday did not identify the victims, but family members said the children ranged in age from 10 months to 3 years. They said the woman who died was three months pregnant and was the mother of three of the children inside. The other two children were siblings and friends of the family, visiting for the night for a sleepover, the relatives said.

Officials said the cause of the fire was under investigation. Arson investigators were at the scene Saturday, but officials said no foul play was suspected.

Laura Cima said she owned the single-story, wood-frame house that the couple was renting. She said they had recently moved in and were busy painting and getting carpets cleaned. They shared a bedroom in the back of the house, and Cima said the children were sleeping in a front room Saturday morning. She described an unused bedroom where she and her husband saw flames pouring out of a window when they arrived Saturday.

Gray is a few miles outside of Corbin, a city of about 7,000 in the foothills of Appalachia near the Daniel Boone National Forest and the borders of Tennessee and Virginia.

Shannon Disney, a sister-in-law of one of the victims, said the house that burned on Shady Brook Lane is surrounded by homes of family members — so many that the area is nicknamed "Disneyland." She said a relative who drove past the house at 7:45 a.m. noticed nothing unusual, but another who lives nearby saw smoke coming from it around 9 a.m.

Disney described the couple as devoted to the children, with their lives organized around bedtime and bath time. She said the woman had just gotten an ultrasound, and the couple was excited to plan for the birth, though they didn't know yet whether it was a boy or girl.

Lisa Norman-Hudson / AP

A charred house partially stands on March 10 after it was gutted by a fire in Gray, Ky., on March 9, killing two adults and five children.

Disney called the house alive with kids, with the couple regularly pulling children on a wagon, pushing a tire swing or playing hide-and-seek. On Sunday, children's toys and a stroller were seen outside the house as a stream of people stopped by.

"Everybody is very heartbroken over it. Everybody knows the Disney family," said Amy Weddle, who was working Sunday at J&G Market, a popular convenience store where the couple and the children frequently stopped to buy candy and milk. "They're always good to everybody."

Weddle put a jar on the counter Sunday seeking donations to help pay for burial expenses. It had four $1 dollar bills in it Sunday morning.

State police said Sunday that no more information on the fire would be released until Monday.

Joshua Ball/The Ashland Daily Independent via AP

Members of the Perry County Sheriff Office respond to the scene at Hazard Community College, Jan. 15, after a shooting at the school in Hazard, Ky. Authorities say two people were shot and killed and a teen was wounded in the parking lot.

Updated 12:50 a.m. ET: Two people were killed and a teenager was wounded in the parking lot of a Kentucky community college, authorities said.

The shooting took place before 6 p.m. at Hazard Community and Technical College, according to LEX18.com. The teenager was flown to the University of Kentucky hospital, 120 miles away.

Hazard Police Chief Minor Allen said the shooting could be could be related to a domestic situation, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported. The suspect, identified by police as Dalton Stidham, turned himself in to Kentucky State Police, the Herald-Leader reported. Police said Stidham faced two counts of murder and one count of attempted murder, according to WLEX TV.

Police identified the victims as Caitlin Cornett and her uncle, Jackie Cornett. The injured teen is Jackie Cornett's daughter, WLEX reported.

Caitlin Cornett was a student at the college, according to a WLEX reporter. Hazard Assistant Chief Joe Engle told the Herald-Leader that preliminary information indicated that Stidham and Caitlin Cornett had a child in common and were meeting in a parking lot of the school to exchange the child for visitation.

A notice on the school’s website said that an “incident” had occurred on campus, adding, “We ask that you please stay away from campus at this time.” 

The college's academic programs range from associate's degrees in arts and sciences to career-focused training in mining technology and heavy-equipment operation.

--The Associated Press and NBC's Denise Ono contributed reporting.

Mecklenburg County Sheriff

William Hilton Paul, 19, was arrested Saturday at Charlotte Douglas International Airport for alcohol-related offenses.

William Hilton Paul, the 19-year-old son of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and grandson of former presidential candidate Ron Paul, was arrested Saturday morning for alcohol-related offenses at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, police said.

After arriving on a U.S. Airways flight from Lexington, Ky., police charged Paul, who lives in Bowling Green, Ky., with three misdemeanors, including consuming beer/wine underage, disorderly conduct and being intoxicated and disruptive.

Paul’s bond was posted at $750. He was released about two-and-a-half hours after he was booked at the Mecklenburg County Jail, county records show.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Lt. Blake Hollar told the Charlotte Observer that Paul “was possibly served alcohol on the flight."

He is scheduled to appear in court at 1 p.m. Tuesday.

In a brief statement from Rand Paul’s office, communications director Moira Bagley said, "Sen. Paul is a national public figure and subject to scrutiny in the public arena, however, as many parents with teenagers would understand, his family should be afforded the privacy and respect they deserve in a situation such as this." 

More content from NBCNews.com:

• Rewards planned in possibly linked killings of elderly Calif. women
• Some wounded vets shine on 'Alive Day,' others wear black
• California man says he can drive in carpool lane with corporation papers
• Police: 4 dead, including gunman, in Aurora, Colo., hostage situation
• Tattoo photos lead to woman's arrest in global child porn investigation
• What Supreme Court? Gay marriage battles rage in the states
• Video: Warehouses full of criminal evidence lost to Sandy

Follow US news from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook

Some Louisville, Ky., police officers got the surprise of their careers when they pulled over a car with expired license plates: a man bound in the trunk.

Shawn Bloemer, 22, could hear the officers from inside the cramped space.

“I heard a voice and I could tell from his inflection of what have you that he was an officer. He came back and asked about insurance and that’s when I started kicking and punching on the hood, yelling,” Bloemer told WTSP 10 News.

Bloemer, a clerk at a local Circle K convenience store, says he was captured after his late-night shift and locked in the trunk of his own car after he discovered three people -- Brittany Elder, Trent Blye, and Joseph Davis -- trying to steal his tires. Bloemer said Blye assaulted him, along with the others.

"He started to hit me, struck me in the head, punched me in the stomach a couple of times. They shoved me headfirst into the light post," Bloemer said, according to WDRB.

The three attackers then allegedly forced Bloemer into the trunk of his vehicle with his wrists tied with a t-shirt and a towel wrapped around his head. 

"Right before they closed the trunk they said, 'This isn't personal, we need your car,'" Bloemer said.

Bloemer estimates he spent nearly three hours locked in the trunk on that August night while his kidnappers drove around. At one point, he fell unconscious.

“It was really hot. I passed out a couple times,” Bloemer said.

Around 3:30 a.m., he woke up to flashing red and blue lights he could see through a crack in the taillight. 

Officers Fred Wilson and Daniel Goldberg had initially flagged the vehicle for expired plates. But when Goldberg heard someone in the trunk while talking to the occupants, he realized this wouldn't be an ordinary traffic stop.

"At that point the officer became very much more aware, immediately called for backup," Bloemer said.

In the dash cam video, officers are seen pulling the kidnappers out of the car one by one and rescuing Bloemer from the trunk.

Police have arrested Elder, Blye and Davis, who allegedly purchased illegal drugs during their late-night joyride, according to WTSP 10 News. They are each charged with kidnapping, wanton endangerment, and theft of Bloemer’s car.

More content from NBCNews.com:

• More than 20,000 students to miss school as teachers in Chicago suburb strike
• Witnesses: Man pushed to his death on NYC subway tracks after argument
• Florida guide uses hunting as rustic therapy for combat veterans
• Police: Kansas City Chiefs linebacker kills girlfriend, then himself
• Cuba pushes swap: its spies jailed in US for American contractor held in Havana
• Passengers killed when tour bus hits Miami airport overpass
• Women warriors pass elite Army training course
• 66 species of coral proposed for protection by US

Follow US news from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook