Hollywood’s Depiction of Batman Seems to Have Confused People on His Stance on Gun Control
Another day, another round of Batman discourse. Over the weekend, videos from a pro-gun protest in Richmond, Virginia went viral on social media. The protest was against a proposal for new state legislation that would ban certain firearms and high capacity magazines — and one particular attendee caught people’s attention.
A man cosplaying as Robert Pattinson’s incarnation of Batman voiced his opinions on the issue to a local reporter, arguing that “people need to be able to defend themselves” because there isn’t an actual Batman around to do so.
“I’m here because I’m not actually a real superhero,” the man begins. “This isn’t real. People need to be able to defend themselves, because I can’t be there. There’s nothing like this that’s actually real. If they make it illegal for law-abiding citizens to own guns, criminals still have guns. It doesn’t check them. And I can’t be there to check them either. So, it’s important that everybody has a right to have a weapon.”
His comments were very quickly torn apart on social media… largely for how much he appears to misunderstand Batman’s actual stance on guns. Throughout his decades worth of comic appearances, Bruce Wayne has largely been against using firearms while suited up as his alter ego, largely as a result of his parents being gunned down in an alley in front of him. Despite how often his origin story has been retold onscreen, to the point of people joking about the visual of Martha Wayne’s pearls falling to the ground, people seem to gloss over the role that a firearm actually plays in the act, and how that would probably traumatize him going forward.
You’re Missing the Point!
That isn’t to say that Batman hasn’t used guns: he toted one in a few of his earlier comic appearances, but that was largely a result of co-creators Bill Finger and Bob Kane presenting him as a The Shadow-esque pulp hero. There’s also “Batman: Year Two”, a 1987 story arc from Mike W. Barr, Alan Davis, and Todd McFarlane, which is probably best known for its cover image of Batman blankly staring at the reader while holding a gun. More specifically, it is the exact gun that killed Bruce’s parents, which he’d stowed away for decades in hopes of using it on the man who carried out the act, Joe Chill.
More recently, Batman also used a super-powered gun to kill Darkseid in Final Crisis. And Ben Affleck’s incarnation of the character used guns to kill henchmen in the DC Extended Universe, with director Zack Snyder repeatedly defending the choice.
Still, Batman’s storied history has been marked by a pretty staunch stance against guns, a fact that has led people to call out this Richmond man for woefully misunderstanding the character. Amid comments calling him “a fake Batman fan”, the replies are flooded with one specific panel from The Dark Knight Returns, where Batman literally snaps a gun in half while arguing: “This is the weapon of the enemy. We do not need it. We will not use it.” Some have also scrutinized the choice to specifically dress up at Pattinson’s Batman, who literally said the words “No guns” to Jim Gordon in 2022’s The Batman.
And some are just acknowledging the ways that Batman, despite being one of the most iconic superheroes of all time, is still misinterpreted in the public eye. As one comment from @gothamcityelle argues: “people see that Bruce Wayne is a white male billionaire and then project their incel ‘alpha male’ conservative fantasies onto him. they can’t fathom someone with privilege and power who actually has a conscience and a strict moral code that favors the people. this is so basic.”
(featured image: DC)
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