America, wake up. Another little boy is dead.

In America, another little boy has lost his life.

On Sunday, a three-year-old boy picked up an unattended gun.

A baby boy was playing nearby in the Cleveland, Ohio home, as the toddler took the weapon into his chubby hand.

Perhaps the boys were brothers, or perhaps their parents were friends — those details are unclear in local media reports.

What we know for sure is that both little boys could not comprehend the dangerous power he wielded, weighing that weapon between his little fingers.

What we also know is that, however it happened, the gun went off — striking the baby boy in the head.

The small child was rushed to hospital, but was later pronounced dead.

Local media reports the boy’s mother, who is understood to live in the house with at least three small children, could be heard screaming on the back porch after learning her son had died.

It is believed at least one adult was home when the shooting happened, and that whoever left the gun unsecured is likely to face charges.

It’s a tragic incident — but it’s far from an isolated one. A staggering nine children are unintentionally shot each day in the US, as president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence Dan Gross told The Washington Post.

Which means that, time and time again, we hear stories like this tragic tale from Cleveland — stories that end with the senseless loss of children’s lives.

In January, two-year-old Kaleb Ahles found his father’s handgun in the Florida family’s car, pointed it at his tiny chest and pulled the trigger. His parents heard a loud “pop” and ran toward the car. His devastated mother began CPR while another family member called an ambulance, but the little boy could not be saved.

Earlier this year, a nine-month-old baby called Corbin died after being shot with a revolver by his five-year-old brother in Missouri. The boys’ mum, Alexis Wiederholt, told NBC News she heard a strange pop and her five-year old son screaming “sorry Mum, I shot Corbin”.

In December, a two-year-old boy shot and killed his 29-year-old mother, Veronica Rutledge, in a Walmart store in Idaho after finding the gun in her purse.

And now, there’s been another devastating death in similar, now all-too-familiar, circumstances.

So, today is a time to pay our respects to the child who lost his life in this tragedy; Our thoughts are with his family, as well as those young children who were in the house at the time of the little boy’s shooting.

But today is also a time to pose some serious questions to US legislators and to the gun lobby in that powerful country — a country so great and so progressive in so many other ways.

Because despite what some gun lobbyists may say, these accidental shootings are not just “one of those things” that happen. Indeed, as Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams told reporters at the weekend, “This fascination that we have with handguns, not just in this city but in this country, has to stop.

“This is a senseless loss of life.”

As an Australian — in a country where tight gun laws are now a defining feature in what makes us feel safe —  these sorts of deaths seems incomprehensible. The US has far more gun-related killings than any other developed country. Per capita, that’s 30 times more than Australia.

But gun reform for the US is a divisive topic, so ingrained is the sentiment that “guns keep people safe” — despite the overwhelming evidence that people who carry guns are nearly five times more likely to be shot than those who don’t carry guns.

The gun lobby in America, which lobbies the government to maintain the status quo of gun regulation in the states, loves to argue that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”. But they are forgetting one very important fact: Guns assist people in killing people, quickly and efficiently.

They are also forgetting that, when millions of guns exist in family homes around the country, it’s inevitable that young children — who haven’t even had the chance to ask a grown-up what ‘death’ means yet, who haven’t heard of the second amendment and don’t know about the so-called ‘right’ to bear arms — will seize those guns occasionally.

And in some tragic cases, they will consequently have their lives brought to a bloody, abrupt, and tragic halt.

Related content: To the people who say Australia needs to relax its gun laws…

That cannot keep happening.

So America, wake up.

Another little boy just lost his life, and we cannot bring him back, no matter how much we wish we could.

But we can honour the memory of this beautiful little boy — and the countless other innocent children who lose their lives in gun-related incidents each year in the US — by making sure no more die in the same way.

Our thoughts are with the families of the children who have lost their lives to gun violence.