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# Bullets Have No Sex: The Rise of Women Gunfighters in Cinema
- URL: https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/the-rise-of-women-gunfighters-in-cinema/
- Published: 2026-09-30T16:00:43.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-30T16:00:42.000Z
- Description: These days, women are likelier to be armed on the big screen, not just in real life.
- Author: Monica Castillo
- Tags: #women-and-guns, Gun Violence, The Culture Around Us, Film & TV

From cowboys to spies, American cinema grew up with a gun in its hand. One of the earliest films made in the U.S., at the dawn of the 20th century, was about train thieves and their subsequent capture: Edwin S. Porter’s “The Great Train Robbery.” The short thrilled audiences with an action-packed story that saw justice restored by good guys with guns in just one reel of film, a little over 10 minutes. Bullets meant action, terror, suspense, perhaps even tragedy or a happy ending, depending on whose body they riddled.

While gunfighting skews heavily toward male protagonists to this day, women have had their hands on triggers throughout cinema history. And through [the Production Code](https://researchguides.dartmouth.edu/filmstudies/productioncode?ref=vitalcitynyc.org) — which mandated certain topics like sex “perversion” (i.e., homosexuality), childbirth and nudity were unfit for the screen, while they added cautionary warnings around the depiction of rape, prostitution, men and women in bed together, and the use of guns — a certain level of decorum onscreen had a hand in keeping women mostly as damsels in distress. Since the Code’s collapse in the late 1960s, women have increasingly become the heroes in their own stories, saving the day, avenging their lost loved ones or playing the unruly villain, afraid of neither man nor death. As gender equality became more widely accepted, women in film increasingly took charge, sometimes gun-blazing, to fight danger in a way previous generations of audiences never saw before. 

By the 1980s, as explosion-fueled blockbusters dominated the box office, women also got in on the action. Some were armed with just as much firepower as the men, ready to take on aliens, machines and whatever else stood in their way. These action heroines preceded the real-life increase of women gun owners in the following decades, the [majority of whom cited safety concerns](https://www.marieclaire.com/politics/women-and-guns-statistics-marie-claire-harvard-injury-control-center/?ref=vitalcitynyc.org) as their reason for owning a gun. A [Gallup poll](https://news.gallup.com/poll/653621/gun-ownership-rates-spiked-among-republican-women.aspx?ref=vitalcitynyc.org) found that the gender gap between men and women owning guns has shrunk over the past years, especially among conservative women, pointing to a change in attitude toward the weapon mirroring women’s [increased fear for their safety](https://news.gallup.com/poll/544415/personal-safety-fears-three-decade-high.aspx?ref=vitalcitynyc.org). No longer just the provenance of sci-fi dystopias, there is more interest in and acceptance for women taking up arms to avoid becoming the damsel waiting to be rescued. 

Let’s back up to put things in clear context. Women were thrilling audiences with their brave derring-do and stunts long before recent memory. Before cinema became popular, Annie Oakley thrilled 19th century audiences with her sharpshooting skills. Later, she became the eponymous star of one of Thomas Edison's earliest films in 1894 when he filmed her for about 20 seconds performing some of her famous trick shots, making her one of the first women in film to shoot a gun. During the 1900s and 1910s, there were women playing spies during wartime, like [Gene Gauntier](https://wfpp.columbia.edu/pioneer/ccp-gene-gauntier/?ref=vitalcitynyc.org) in “The Girl Spy” serials; they also played “gun women” out west like [Texas Guinan](https://wfpp.columbia.edu/pioneer/ccp-texas-guinan/?ref=vitalcitynyc.org), Louise Lester, and Marie Walcamp. Oakley and other women of Western movies represented a kind of freedom from gender norms and social expectations. They were powerful and self-sufficient in a way that many women couldn’t legally access at the time, making them anomalies and sources of curiosity.

Not coincidentally, women in the nascent film industry enjoyed creative opportunities both in front of and behind the camera and could take risks like their male colleagues. 

Unfortunately, this era was short-lived. As Hollywood built its studio system in the 1920s, women were increasingly shut out from creative decisions and risky, daredevil scenarios. Corporate consolidation also meant less output, so there were fewer varieties of independent productions as they fell out of favor. While traditional gender norms kept “women’s pictures” largely in the melodrama department, there was the occasional woman who would behave badly enough onscreen to keep the censors angry and the public entertained. 

That was the case of Bette Davis in “The Letter,” which shockingly starts with her shooting an ex-lover. Davis’ character is complex, one that just barely skirted past the Code, the type of woman audiences weren’t used to seeing as much because of these narrative restrictions. The rise of film noir in the postwar years ushered in the femme fatale, a woman who could lead a man to their doom with her wiles, or, on occasion, with her own gun. The aptly titled “Gun Crazy” follows a couple who take their shooting skills to a life of crime, but it’s Peggy Cummins’ character, Laurie, who kills the most people on their spree. In both “The Letter” and “Gun Crazy,” these badly behaved women had to be punished per the [Production Code’s rules](https://www.britannica.com/art/Hays-Code?ref=vitalcitynyc.org), which advocated against anything that could be perceived as condoning murder. Both women meet their ends as a manner of onscreen justice, a warning not to follow their crooked examples. 

As the Production Code crumbled in the late 1960s, transgressive movies like “Bonnie and Clyde” dealt the final blows, ringing in a new era in Hollywood. Faye Dunaway brings a gleeful enthusiasm for the violence her character Bonnie Parker carries out. Driven by a lust for money, fame and sex (which Clyde (Warren Beatty) can’t deliver), she takes what life hasn’t given her. Like the characters of “Gun Crazy” and “The Letter,” Bonnie meets a fatal end, but this time, it’s one that’s prescribed by history and not studio notes. 

Now that the Production Code dam had been broken, women made headway into becoming the action heroes we watch today. Blaxploitation films of the 1970s introduced one of the first modern action stars with Pam Grier, often in roles as the avenging angel fighting for someone she loved — like taking on the villains who killed her boyfriend in “Foxy Brown” or who got her sister addicted to drugs in “Coffy.” Her characters were unapologetic, resourceful and powerful enough to take on slews of villains with a gun. Grier didn’t play damsels waiting to be rescued; her roles were a reflection of the changing times, one where women could be just as capable and as quick a draw as their male co-stars. Considering that women [couldn’t apply for credit cards](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/credit-cards/when-could-women-get-credit-cards/?ref=vitalcitynyc.org) without a male co-signer until 1974, when “Foxy Brown” came out, a Black woman action hero was a radical counterculture figure. 

It took a few years for the major studios to catch up, but by the 1980s, women were leading some of the biggest sci-fi franchises at the box office. Sigourney Weaver and Linda Hamilton found success in “Alien” and “Terminator” just as macho movies like “First Blood” and “Predator” took off. In these movies, women had to be as good as — if not better than — the men to survive. Gender wasn’t much of a factor in those dystopian sci-fi worlds, only survival, and that often meant being a sure shot with a steady stream of ammo. As the budgets increased, so did the bullet count, slowly ramping up the ante for more women in action movies. 

As the popularity of Westerns faded, sci-fi and horror movies flourished with the same premise: These were lawless realms that excused women from traditional gendered expectations. These movies showcased women with tough, confident attitudes, assured of their capabilities, their freedom earned and defended by bullets — and for many of them, they arrived with an unmistakable sex appeal. They could be powerful, but they still had to be feminine.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, video games inspired a number of action movies, including adaptations of “Resident Evil” starring Milla Jovovich and “Tomb Raider” starring Angelina Jolie. Both actresses would add numerous other bullet-riddled action movies to their resumes. Kate Beckinsale played a vampire assassin in the “Underworld” series, adding supernatural abilities to her gun-filled fighting arsenal. All three posed with guns on their respective posters as a way to show off their strength.

Women were firmly in the lead by now, emptying just as many clips as their onscreen male counterparts. While most women in action movies are portrayed as loners or occasionally love interests, in a few exceptions, women banded together to fight for a common cause, like pulling off a bank robbery to win financial freedom in “Set It Off.” 

In some action films of the past 30 or so years, gender seems more like an afterthought, almost swinging back to the heyday of 80s action heroines. The Wachowski sisters’ “The Matrix” series not only introduced audiences to the often-imitated “bullet-time” sequence featuring the movie’s main character Neo (Keanu Reeves), but also introduced the mysterious Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), an equally formidable fighter who helps Neo come into his power. Since Trinity, there have been many more women in action movies to take up arms and fight for a cause or a job, including the calculated cool of Charlize Theron’s performance in “Atomic Blonde” or her resistance-leading Furiosa in “Mad Max: Fury Road”; the chaotic glee of Margot Robbie and her costars in “Birds of Prey”; balancing glamor with stunts as Ana de Armas does in the “John Wick” sequel “Ballerina”; or the number of appearances Scarlett Johansson put in as one of the original “Avengers" in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. By now, it’s no surprise that even a blood-soaked series like “John Wick” features gunfighters of any gender. 

Far from a novelty, women in action movies have long been a part of the cinematic landscape. As the situations and settings have changed with the times, so have the social and industry attitudes toward women fighting with guns as intensely as their male counterparts. Even if men are still overrepresented in the action genre, women are just as capable of leading the charge, commanding a mission, or going out for revenge. American history has never lacked for bullets, and neither have the movies that both hold up a mirror to who we are and shape our sense of self. Armed American women can increasingly see themselves in those mirrors, and those mirrors send a message back to American women that it’s not only men who put their fingers on triggers.