the girls & their guns
locked and loaded. finger on the trigger-warning.
In a guest essay for trendfriends, writer Madeline Howard examines the online cultural interplay between guns and girlhood.
The hottest accessory? A Glock. Seriously though—“the girls” are posing with their guns.
After losing out at the Grammys in April 2024, singer-songwriter Lana Del Rey shared a mirror selfie. In the photo, she’s wearing a simple white dress. A big bow sits on her chest. Tresses of dark brown hair fall around her angelic face. Her iPhone is in her left hand. In her right, she’s holding a pistol. The selfie is picture-perfect balance: a weapon designed to wound and youthful, girlish innocence.
Conservatives have been proudly posting with their guns since time immemorial. But now, the United States’ firearm obsession has transcended party lines, infiltrating the social media posts of (mostly white) “girls” (women) and the seemingly left-leaning. In an online world where sincerity is dead, posting with a gun—flouncy, frilly dress and all—is the new norm. It’s provocative, subverting feminine tropes, and also nods to the inherent violence of girlhood itself.
In her 2019, Del Rey released the song “Looking For America” in response to mass shootings, singing the lyrics: “Still looking for my own version of America. One without the gun, where the flag can freely fly. No bombs in the sky, only fireworks when you and I collide.” And yet, the singer was spotted smiling at the shooting range in February 2024. What changed? Can you both want gun control and still delight in them for sport? Probably, yes. But still.
Love it or hate it, Lana and other women’s penchant for post-ironic gun posting somewhat makes sense. There have already been around 20 mass shootings less than one month into 2025. Approximately 503 mass shootings occurred in 2024, resulting in 16,752 deaths and 31,646 injuries. There were 330 incidents of gun violence on school property in 2024, down by just 19 incidents compared to 2023. Firearms are still the leading cause of death for all children and teenagers. (If you are even marginally aware of U.S. goings-on, you probably don’t need these statistical reminders.) This is all to say that people in the U.S. feel powerless in the face of gun violence and the government’s failure to adequately address it, no matter how much its citizens beg for change.
Exhausted by being ignored, the girls have embraced guns instead. Never mind who actually owns the guns or where they got them. Politicians and pop stars alike can wield guns, so now the girls can, too, whether you’re a Second Amendment stan or not. As the downtown-favorite singer, the Dare, rhapsodizes in his hit 2022 single “Girls” after all: “I like the girls that do drugs. Girls with cigarettes in the back of the club. Girls that hate cops and buy guns.”
To a niche group of online alt-girls, it seems the ubiquity of guns in the U.S. has made posting with them effectively meaningless, one big, hilarious joke if you opt into the edginess: I believe in gun control, and yet I’m holding a gun. Get it? It’s funny because I don’t mean it. (Or maybe some of them do. “You guys wanna see my new gun?” said singer Ethel Cain in a February 2024 YouTube livestream. “It’s so pretty,” she quipped, holding up a Colt Woodsman Match Target.)
The thing about guns, though, is that they’re not harmless. Harm is inherent in their design. And holding one isn’t meaningless—or maybe it is, as long as you’re white. Black folks posting with or singing about guns has been historically met with outrage and the label of “thug” or “delinquent,” whether they’re licensed to carry that gun or not. And Black people (often, literal children) have been killed for holding objects that even resemble a gun. (Or while completely unarmed…).
Nevertheless, the pendulum swing toward the normalization of gun touting continues for some. It’s NRA-bought Trump’s America once again, so odds are, the firearms aren’t going anywhere anytime soon—online or IRL. “This girl is a gun, and we’ve been havin’ some fun [...] So lemme show you how to touch my trigger,” sings Halsey in “Girl is a Gun.” Maybe it’s just me, but… I’m still gun-shy.
 | A guest post by
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while i love the observation about guns in the pop culture space and the points you make, i was hoping that you would talk about girlhood and growing up with guns. my dad taught me early, i've grown up with them.
still, loved this post!