Alright /co/, lets have a conversation about Batman and gun usage. Batman always seems to be stereotyped as the guy who will never use a gun but why?
The characters earliest days had him using a gun
Then once rules changed he stopped but for some reason when everything went back to normal they decided the character was better off not using them. Instead he continued to use gadgets such as Batarangs and grappling guns etc. to show him as more heroic
All of these gadgets can be used potentially lethal way but as such never are.
So where did this Batman Hates Guns idea start?
People will always try to cite TDKR as evidence that Batman thinks they are "the weapon of the enemy" but in that very story Batman uses a gun to kill a man and save the life of a child.
Others say it was because his parents were killed using a gun. Well what if they were stabbed? Where does the line get drawn for this character? What if Batman only used a gun to shoot cripple ala his Batarangs? I mean he is regularly portrayed as being willing to break bones so why not inflict bullet wounds?
>>78252942
He didn't kill him. Frank Miller said it he had problems showing how batman just hurt him. Even in the animated version the show what it was meant to be
>>78252942
>Alright /co/, lets have a conversation about Batman and gun usage. Batman always seems to be stereotyped as the guy who will never use a gun but why?
Because he's incredibly traumatized by his parents death
>>78252942
>but in that very story Batman uses a gun to kill a man
You didn't read the comic, did you.
Speaking of Dark Knight Returns & guns, was that where the idea of Batman hating guns became a popular part of his character.
I know he hadn't used guns in years, but I don't know if he vigorously, or often expressed a disdain for them before that.
>>78252942
People mostly think he has a disdain for guns because of TAS. He's an expert marksman and trains Robin to shoot well into the Bronze Age. I think it was in Ten Nights of the Beast where he has Robin use a rifle to keep the police back.
>>78254294
I just double checked those pages cause I had my doubts and I'm now completely certain that if Miller did say that it was just to get not muh Batman autists off his back. The gun makes a gunshot sound effect (the same as it had on all earlier instances when it was fired) and ejects a casing while Batman's finger is on the trigger and then we see the Mutant slump down against the wall with a blood spatter pattern and a bullet hole behind him. I don't see how anyone drawing it could really expect it to be read any other way. If he wanted to show him shooting the gun out of the Mutants hand or something he could have drawn that.
Anyways I liked, it doesn't contradict in any way Batman being against guns or killing (he remains consistently against both throughout the book), just that he wasn't going to let a kid die to satisfy some sort of pathological gun phobia (ie. he's a hero who understands the value of human life and not a delusional emotionally unstable coward like so many people seem to want him to be) and the author respected the reader enough not to try to pull some ridiculous work around solution out of his ass.
I'm definitely pro-Batman-doesn't-use-guns-or-kill-people but the trend of making this some all important trait with cosmic significance or a weird psychosis he has breakdowns over is fucking lame. I always liked the bit in Year One where the kid stealing TVs starts to fall off the balcony and he rushes to save him because "I'm no killer" - like it was a deliberate choice he made to try to be better than the people he fights and that trying to avoid killing required no further explanation, it was just the right thing to do (again, a real hero and not just a psycho suffering from unprocessed childhood trauma)
>>78255615
Dunno dude, I just believe Batman didn't killed him, that's it. Even the animated movie version went that way, and Batman in TDKR talks about hating guns and not killing, like when he broke the neck of the joker, but not to the point where he killed him. If Miller said it I believe it, but you don't have to believe me, because yes, it looks like batman just shot a man.
>>78255615
>Rubber bullets, honest
>Lana goes "Batman hasn't killed anybody in the next issue
>Batman is only slapped with a murder charge when the Joker's body is found
He didn't kill that Mutant gang member.
>>78254492
There was a Golden Age story where he showed disdain for using guns (this was long after Robin was introduced), so it was around there but it wasn't a strict thing. It probably got strict maybe around the 90's.
>>78252942
because he was a blatant rip off of The Shadow and other pulp heroes of the time so distancing him from the killing and guns was one way to make him more unique.
>>78257496
It's different, no one saw him do it and no one's going to pin the murder of some random gangster who turns up shot on Batman, especially with Gordon still being in charge at that point.
>>78257527
The earliest mention of an explicit code against killing dates back to about his second year, where he informed Robin that "we never kill with weapons of any kind." I think guns wound up being phased out, because guns are kinda hard to write a believable nonlethal action scene with (unless you really abuse the whole "he shoots the gun out of their hands" thing, which can look pretty silly when overused).
Later on, writers linked Batman's disdain for lethal weapons with the fact that Batman's parents were killed by a man with a gun, and for many years, he didn't know the man's identity, so he focused on the gun.
>>78252942
It's more interesting if he doesn't use guns.
Batman only used guns for like the first few months that the character existed.
They were still fleshing out the idea, Anon.
>>78255615
Wasn't this all a thing with comic books in general? They treated guns like they were unholy manifestations of Satan, even though you got dudes who destroy skyscrapers just by blinking the wrong way.
>>78258516
Guns are a thing the target audience can get hold of and use, whereas it's rare for a member of the target audience to be able to destroy a skyscraper by blinking. They don't want to have some kid shoot someone and then have it blamed on him copying something he saw in a comic.
