ABSTRACT
In October 2015, the same year that the white supremacist Dylann Roof purchased a gun and shot dead nine African Americans in downtown Charleston, the National Rifle Association (NRA) released a video narrated by its executive vice president and CEO, Wayne LaPierre. Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, deprived inner-city neighbourhoods of Los Angeles (LA) were under fire. In a city literally surrounded by gun manufacturers that were preoccupied with sales figures rather than safety features, inexpensive firearms were readily available on the urban streets. Ghetto action movies had already started to challenge broader cultural perceptions of non-white male youth as simply dangerous, trigger-happy killers. Guns and their devastating consequences in the urban neighbourhood are aligned with political meaning in Boyz. Statistically, firearms have and continue to be owned by a higher percentage of men than women. Placing the gun in the homegirls' hands renegotiates the phallocentric association of the gun in the gangsta narrative to some extent.
