Women Who Love Their Weapons ‘A Girl and a Gun,’ [View all]

[jakeXT]

Women Who Love Their Weapons
‘A Girl and a Gun,’ Cathryne Czubek’s Look at a Subculture

“It’s hard, it’s hot, it shoots things out,” says one excited interviewee in “A Girl and a Gun,” Cathryne Czubek’s cross-country survey of American women and their firearms. “It’s my first boyfriend,” coos another, tenderly stroking the barrel of her sleek companion, while the blogger Violet Blue just loves her Lady Smith revolver. “It’s owning my womanhood,” says Ms. Blue, who purchased her first weapon after receiving death threats while writing for The San Francisco Chronicle.

Sampling a respectable range of beliefs and backgrounds — including a competitive skeet shooter and more than one victim of violence — Ms. Czubek reaches the unremarkable conclusion that women who like guns do so for lots of different reasons. But whether viewed as empowerment tools or aphrodisiacs, stress relievers or deadly bodyguards, these weapons and their owners never cohere into an actual point. A tai chi instructor with a healthy fear of a volatile ex-boyfriend shops for an ultralight shotgun; a terrified young widow, cradling a baby in one hand and a handgun in the other, recalls killing an intruder who tried to break into her home.

But no matter how moving or morally ambivalent these women are, Ms. Czubek seems content to hop from one anecdote to another, unwilling to shape her findings into a larger investigation or deeper analysis. A sprinkling of historians touch on shifting cultural attitudes and the enduring appeal of the frontier woman, but the movie is clearly torn between femme-fatale pride and contempt for the gun industry’s tackier sales tactics. Only once do we feel ourselves teetering on the edge of something profound, when a convicted killer regrets the ease of pulling the trigger on her girlfriend. If she had been forced to use a knife, she says, her partner would still be alive.


http://movies.nytimes.com/2013/07/05/movies/a-girl-and-a-gun-cathryne-czubeks-look-at-a-subculture.html?_r=0