“I’ve Been Shot Down, Bang, Bang, Bang!”  From the opening frames of Cathryne Czubek’s no-holds-barred documentary, A Girl and A Gun, we are assaulted by a twangy string of lyrics impossible to ignore.  Make no mistake.  In the words of one outspoken gun-toting subject, as a woman, “you move through the world as a target” and that time for Czubek’s armed or unarmed girls is up. 

Told through the highly personal and graphic perspective of women whose lives have been forever altered by firearms, these stories sear into our collective minds.  Robin Natanel from Holliston, Massachusetts is a Thai Chi Instructor who goes shopping for a gun after a nasty breakup with her boyfriend.  She’s an engaging middle-aged woman whose frequent appearances light up the screen, whether she’s handling an ultra-light 20-gauge shotgun for possible purchase—her  eyebrows lifting over the $1499 price tag—or reconsidering a revolver where “a lot less can go wrong” according to the younger salesman.  After all, wouldn’t she be safer with a gun in her purse that could deliver three shots in three seconds at a distance of three feet?

The audience can feel Robin Natanel’s frustration when she confesses the fear she’s felt for her life.  Faced with the illegality of owning a stun gun, she describes the absurdity of her situation.  “I can shoot him dead but I can’t stun him.”  She is advised by a member of law enforcement to get a bat.

For several of director Czubek’s subjects, vulnerability is their overriding concern.  This is never more present than in Sarah McKinley’s case.  A very young, slender mother—recently widowed by a cancer-ridden husband—she presides alone over a desolate 2,000 acre spread in Blanchard, Oklahoma, wide-eyed over the immensity of her loneliness. With one hand around her weapon and another around the baby, she eyes the rubble from a recent break-in.  She stood her ground and shot the intruder dead.  Now she must live with the psychic consequences of her actions, walking the thin line between taking a life to save a life.  “It’s scary watching your back all the time,” she tells us.

It is this sequence that feels at times strangely out of joint with the rest of a fast-paced, at times even seductive, exploration of a woman’s role in the gun culture-at-large.  McKinley is left alone to pace the wilderness of her home—inside and out—mumbling through her monologue of grief and confusion in a kind of cinema verite style, the camera serving as an unseen, non-judgmental observer. 

If fear and powerlessness holds sway for some, Violet Blue, a savvy, generously tattooed blogger and writer for The San Francisco Chronicle, shows off her Lady Smith revolver, bragging about the perfect body fit.  Receiving online death threats, she wholeheartedly embraces her new aggressive persona.  Stephanie Alexander, an African-American victims-rights activist from New Jersey, admits to her past life as a drug addict and the feeling of invincibility while packing a gun.  Her daughter’s paralysis from a stray drive-by shooting was life-altering.  Aleisha may be physically compromised but she’s nobody’s pushover.  Gun-toting is a fact of life.  “People get dressed and put on a gun, just like an outfit,” she professes.  “Anything is a gift and a curse.”

City streets and suburban neighborhoods aren’t the only places where weapons and women can make for a volatile mix. Rosemarie Weber, a Master Gunnery Sergeant in the Gulf War, reminds the viewer that “the beast is inside everyone,” a dormant force that can easily erupt when the circumstances provide the opportunity.  Deployed as the first woman in a Marine air unit to Iraq, her memories are still a fresh wound.  “You have to keep a check on yourself,” she warns us.  Not everyone, like Karen Copeland, is successful at keeping the rage in check.  Incarcerated for 14 years inside the Louisiana Correctional Institute, she was a victim of parental abuse at an early age.  When she felt herself threatened by her girlfriend, “it became too easy for me to pull a trigger.  It became a tool for destruction.”  If she’d only had a knife, she muses, both of their stories might have turned out differently.

The script is action-packed with historical and cultural imagery all too familiar to the majority of filmgoers.  Where historical footage is used, Annie Oakley is an obvious pick. She may have made her name as a sharp-shooting vaudevillian, but she was also a teacher for many women of the day uncertain of how to handle a firearm, let alone shoot the varmint on the other end of the barrel.  Bonnie Parker, the other half of the shoot-em-up killer duo, Bonnie and Clyde, is briefly mentioned as well, but it’s the splash and dash of a legion of armed film heroines that Czubek marches out to keep us glued to the screen.

French film auteur Jean-luc Godard is aptly quoted in the press release.  “All you need for a film is a girl and a gun.”  Czubek obviously took his advice because a bevy of film clips and movie posters are rolled out for our contemplation.  Younger viewers will recognize Angelina Jolie, Jodie Foster or Annette Bening in recent films, but it’s worth noting that Hollywood has a long history of pulling out the femme fatale with deadly intentions as a box office draw.  The film noir landscape is rich with examples, with Barbara Stanwyck in Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity leading the pack.

Thanks in no small part to our media-hungry culture, women and firearms make for a combustible recipe that has Sex in capital letters in the mix.  A shopping-spree interlude in Las Vegas brings that reality home for the viewer.  Pink is the shade of the day in gun and clothing gear and judging by the number of visitors to the particular convention, the market doesn’t seem to be worried a bit about the gun-control advocates in the wider culture.

Czubek does give a brief nod to the conscientious objectors by zeroing in on a conference for those who have lost a loved one to gun violence.  But this is such a small part of her message in the overall documentary.  She seems to be content to let her images and the soundbites of her subjects speak for themselves.  In some respects, that’s a shame when we consider the profound and tragic impact firearms have had on American society in recent years.  Still, it’s these women’s stories that give us pause and for that alone, we can be grateful that the director has given us the opportunity to witness them.

How important are guns to our sense of self-protection?  Philosopher Arnold J. Toynbee had an eloquent answer to the problem:  “The human race’s prospects of survival were considerably better when we were defenseless against tigers than they are today when we have become defenseless against ourselves.”

Cathryne Czubek grew up photographing and printing with her father in their home darkroom, eventually earning an MFA at the School of Visual Arts in New York.  A Girl and A Gun has enjoyed a successful World Premiere at DOC NYC Festival in 2012, and recently opened in July at the Quad in New York and at Laemmle Theatres in Los Angeles.

For more information or to purchase this film, visit www.firstrunfeatures.com

Author Bio:

Sandra Bertrand is a contributing writer at Highbrow Magazine.