Gays Against Guns

“I thought it was a porn movie, GAG,” says John Waters, but he’s impressed by the movement that the acronym actually refers to. “They make people nervous. They even make gay people nervous, which is even better.”

That’s a real achievement given that the wider debate about gun control in the US has been largely static for decades. Some groups, like the survivors of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Florida, have succeeded in making some progress, but most of the time society has succeeded in ignoring them. The LGBTQ+ community, with its flamboyant drag queens and its concentration of creative talents, is difficult to ignore.

This is a very personal subject for director Paul Rowley, and he embeds his documentary, which premièred at Newfest 2026, within his own story. He grew up in Ireland when being gay was illegal there, and emigrated to new York City as soon as he got the chance. His excitement at finding a welcoming community which accepted him for who he was was undermined by the shooting at Florida’s Pulse Nightclub, which claimed the lives of 49 people on 12 June, 2016. This made it very clear that despite the progress being made everywhere, there were still people whose homophobia or transphobia was so intense as to inspire them to kill. What was more, they were easily able to get their hands on guns – even assault weapons originally designed for use in war.

Gays Against Guns was formed the very next day by New Yorkers determined to do something, and Rowley joined right away. This is not, then, a distanced, objective portrait of the movement, but Rowley’s honesty allows viewers to factor in any possible bias, and it provides access to material and perspectives which it would be difficult to get any other way. The fact that Rowley is an outsider by birth means he is still able to approach it from a broader perspective, and there is a point at which he reflects on the seeming impossibility of change in relation to the peace process in Northern Ireland and the once unimaginable cessation of the Troubles. It’s a sobering moment.

The film chronicles the development of Gays Against Guns in linear order, from its first march and the emergence of the human beings – veiled figures in white who carry pictures of gun violence victims and share accounts of their lives – to its expansion beyond responding to incidents with LGBTQ+ victims to supporting those affected by other mass shootings and lobbying for specific pieces of legislative change. A ban on assault weapons and a law requiring guns to be kept away from people with a history of violence are both on the agenda.

There are also interviews with survivors. One young man recalls being shot at Pulse and the long, agonising process of his recovery, which cost him $112,000 in medical bills and may never be complete. He reckons that he would have died were it not for the intervention of a local barber – who knew what to do because he had been shot by the police as a (Black) 14-year-old. Elsewhere, a woman talks about the death of her friend, who was shot when trying to save her girlfriend from rape during a home invasion, and the mother of a murdered trans girl reflects on her daughter’s life, on how much they meant to one another. Another mother remembers how her children tried to kill themselves with pills, and how glad she is that there wasn’t a gun in the house.

It’s a lot, and some people may find parts of it hard to watch, but there is throughout this film a driving positive energy, a commitment to turning frustration into action. After all, ACTup built something out of nothing to transform the public conversation on AIDS, saving countless lives, so the LGBTQ+ community knows how to do these things. Waters – whose place is a given since this is a queer documentary made in New York – says that he thinks humour can change people’s minds when nothing else avails, and maybe that’s the trick. Gays Against Guns doesn’t sit solemnly, steeped in its sorrow, as the bereaved are expected to. It is alive with colour and noise, and the film likewise. The film closes with a list of the movement’s corporate and political wins, and it’s impressive. There’s still a long way to go, but one can feel the momentum. To watch this film is to let a bit of that energy into one’s own life.

Reviewed on: 24 Oct 2026