The further one moves forward in cinema’s history, the stronger the “physical charge” of this icon becomes. French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard is said to have written, “All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun.” (Czubek’s title is a nod to Godard.) And he’s right. Girls and guns are as synonymous with the movies as popcorn and soda. Hollywood’s marriage of the two, originating with Annie Oakley, may be rooted in the dusty prairies of America’s West, but it has branched out over time, encompassing a vast array of settings and characters. And while the woman wielding a gun may vary from femme fatale to avenger to protector to defender to lunatic, there is a near-primal aura that envelops her with a sensual mystique.

Gun-wielding women may be eye candy for the male and female viewer, but the female viewer can also come away with a different message. Compare for example, nearly three decades of strong, female roles whose very survival is defined by their ability to shoot a gun: Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis, Halloween II, 1981); Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton, The Terminator, 1984); Louise Sawyer (Susan Sarandon, Thelma and Louise, 1991); Lara Croft (Angelina Jolie, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, 2001), Erica Bain (Jodie Foster, The Brave One, 2007). Whether it is the frightened naïf, the bad-ass robot killer, the tortured housewife, the sexy aristocrat or the enraged lover, the message is all the same: a woman can save herself, and her family, as long as she has a gun.

In gun circles and gun clubs, the gun is fondly known as the “great equalizer.” Like countless fictionalized women in film, many of Czubek’s subjects are driven by the fear of vulnerability and weakness, believing that as a person of the “lesser sex” the only thing standing between them and a male attacker is a loaded .45 caliber pistol. And gun manufacturers are steady, ready and aiming for those women who seek to arm themselves.

Czubek invites us into the world of the gun show, where 50 shades of pink can be found. There are pink holsters, pink handles, pink camouflage, pink lingerie, and pink guns. There are even bullets that look like lipstick. It is a jocular setting, much like the Tupperware parties of yore — where women share advice, showcase their purchases and chat about this or that new gadget. The same female camaraderie is seen at shooting ranges, where Ladies’ Night is a time-honored tradition whether it’s in midtown Manhattan or a close-knit town in Tennessee.

But there is also a heaviness in the atmosphere that never quite goes away. Everyone knows they are there for reasons other than fondness for pink steel, ball caps and lace. At one point in the film, Natanel reflects, “Police only come after the bad thing happens.” With the gruesome fact that a person is sexually assaulted every two minutes in the United States, it isn’t hard to understand why Czubek’s women might chose to arm themselves with an equalizer. As one gun representative tells a group of women, “Nobody ever raped Mrs. Smith or Mrs. Wesson.”

And yet, with all the giddiness and glitz and glamour, one cannot forget the devastating effects guns can have on society, including several of the women in A Girl & A Gun. Czubek’s film was in the can well before the second worst mass shooting in U.S. history occurred on December 14, 2012 in Newtown, Connecticut. The 20-year-old perpetrator used his mother’s ammunition and weapons to kill children, school officials, himself — and his mother. As the village of Newtown mourned and the nation stood in solidarity over its losses, politicians and activists on both sides of the gun aisle dueled for control. Four months later, nothing has changed.

When I asked Czubek if she would have done anything differently, had she still been in the editing room prior to the Newtown tragedy, she paused, brushed her hair from her face and said, without hesitation, “No.” After a moment, seeming to reflect on the Newtown shootings, she continued, “Sadly, there’s always a story of gun violence. It happens again and again. What I was really trying to understand was what guns meant to people. Why they matter to people.”

Ask anyone on Main Street, be they from the north, south, east or west, and each seems to have an opinion of just how much or how little the U.S. federal government should regulate an industry that, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, contributes more than $33 billion to the U.S. economy. One thing seems clear, however: according to recent polls, 91 percent of all Americans support universal background checks for persons seeking to purchase a gun.

Talk about American gun culture to a European or a Scandinavian, still reeling from the anomalous 2011 shooting massacre that left 69 dead at a summer camp on the Island of Utøya, Norway, and a look of utter incomprehension often sets in. A graduate of European Relations at New York University, Czubek, notes: “It’s really difficult for a foreign audience to understand the relationship we [Americans] have with guns. They get the recreational, competitive sense of guns, but they don’t have the gun culture that we do — that ingrained sense of our culture, history and background — and just how incredibly passionate people feel about it. But I knew once I had the voices stripped of politics, I knew I could reach a lot more people.”

Voices not seeking to make a political statement; women living their lives, the best they can, in the only way they know how — and what a contrast to those who have come before them, be they politicians or filmmakers.

Timely and prescient, Czubek’s documentary may just be what the doctor ordered: a new approach to discussing gun culture in America — a stereoscopic examination of who owns guns, how they live with them and why they have them.

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Featured image: Photo Credit: Catheryne Czubek.