A gun rights advocate from Florida, United States, was accidentally shot in the back by her four-year-old son on Tuesday. Jamie Gilt is popular on social media for her pro-gun page called “Jamie Gilt for Gun Sense”, which uses memes to bait liberals and reiterate her politics. Her Facebook photo shows her sitting with her son and a gun. She is a Republican and a supporter of presidential hopeful Ted Cruz.

On Tuesday, the child was sitting in the back seat of her pickup truck and found the .45 calibre handgun lying on the floor. He set the gun off and Gilt was hospitalised soon after. She is in stable condition. A day before the incident, Gilt had boasted on Facebook that her son gets excited about target shooting with a .22 caliber gun, and insisted that it’s right to protect oneself with weapons. Her Facebook page has since been taken down.

The Jacksonville police are investigating how the gun was stored in the vehicle. It is illegal in Florida to leave a loaded gun where a child can access it. Guns are the subject of a hugely polarising political debate in the US, with Republicans supporting the right to own firearms, and Democrats trying to tighten gun control laws as gun crime rates stay high.