John Ostrander: Batman and The Gun, Revisited
In February 2002, almost twenty-one years ago, DC published a Batman graphic novel that I had written called Batman: Seduction of the Gun. It had its genesis two years earlier when John Reisenbach, the son of an executive of Warner Bros., was shot dead while using a pay phone. DC execs, themselves struck by the senseless act of violence, decided to address the issue of gun and gun-related violence in a special book. Batman was selected as the character best suited for such a story as he has witnessed his own parents shot to death when he was just a boy as part of his mythology.
Our own Dennis O’Neil was the editor of the Batman titles at the time and he approached me as the writer. I had worked with an anti-gun lobby at one point so he knew I was already conversant with the issue. Neither of us wanted to create just a screed against guns. Denny was clear: it first and foremost had to be a good story. What we wanted to say could be layered in but the story itself came first.
I agreed wholeheartedly. As I’ve said elsewhere, I prefer to write questions rather than answers. I believe in having a point of view, especially when writing on an important issue, but I prefer to lay the matter out (as I see it) to the reader and let them come to their own conclusion.
I also did research and found out that, at the time, government statistics suggested that one of four guns used in criminal acts in New York City (where the weapon was recovered) were bought in Virginia. It was one in three for Washington, D.C. Gangs from along the Atlantic Coast came into Virginia to buy guns by the dozens as Virginia had the loosest gun regulations perhaps in the nation. I worked all that into the story.
At the time, Virginia’s governor, Douglas Wilder, was trying to get a very mild gun control measure passed. It would limit gun owners to purchasing one gun a month. You could have belonged to the gun of the month club and still been legal. He heard about Batman: Seduction of the Gun and bought a bunch of them. He placed an issue at every legislators desk and issued press releases how even Batman was talking about the Virginia gun laws. The measure, against all odds, passed.
So – what has happened in the almost twenty-one years since Batman: Seduction of the Gun was published? Guns are more prolific, there have been more shooting in schools (as was depicted in the story), and Virginia repealed the One-Gun-A-Month law last year. The book could be published again today and, aside from a few continuity changes, be as relevant as when it was published.
All this has come to mind not only in the wake of the shooting of the children and teachers at Sandy Hook, CT, but in President Obama’s recommendations this week on gun violence and the NRA’s and the Right’s somewhat hysterical over-reaction to it. Comparing Obama to Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot because of these recommendations? Saying that Martin Luther King, Jr, would have sided with the gun nuts? How do you even start to have a reasonable conversation about guns and gun violence when it begins at that level?
The book was and is controversial. Friends and relatives who are gun enthusiasts hate it and have told me so. However, it is not, in my view, anti-gun. It does not, as I do not, call for outlawing guns. Aside from the Second Amendment debate, I think a prohibition on firearms would be about as effective as the prohibition on alcohol was or the prohibition or marijuana is now. It would just create a new revenue stream for the mobs.
Allowing military style assault weapons and 100 bullet clips, however, makes no sense to me, either. There are those who claim that the real intention of the Second Amendment was to fend off the Federal government. They are delusional. That was written when the gun was a musket. Today? Anyone who thinks their horde of guns is going to deter a government with guns, planes, ships, and drones is having a Red Dawn wet dream. No Amendment is absolute; you cannot libel someone, or shout “fire” in a crowded theater with the intent of starting a riot, no matter what the First Amendment says.
In the story Batman says, “No law passed can change the human heart or open up a mind that is closed. We must give up the guns in our hearts and minds first.” Art is one of the ways you reach hearts and minds. Story can do that, I believe. I look at things twenty plus years since the book was published and I have to wonder.
My hope is that someday Batman: Seduction of the Gun will be regarded as a quaint curiosity; my fear is that it won’t.
MONDAY: Mindy Newell
Erm…..21 years ago?…..are you in the future?? ;)
I got the date wrong. It was 1992. I don’t know why I put in 2002. Brain fart, I think.
Nooo, you’re a comic book and sci-fi author!!
It’s much more interesting if you go with the “I’m writing from the Future!” answer! :)
The pro-gun types like to point out that (in their interpretation) gun control laws have never worked to stem gun violence.
They ignore, of course, the fact that, so long as there are states with as loose laws as Virginia (and, at least at the time 60 Minutes did a story called “The South Carolina Connection”) South Carolina, and so long as people (including criminals) are allowed to travel interstate, the best-written gun laws in other states are effectively rendered non-extant.
Out of curiosity, can you even explain to me the intention of the second ammendment?
Jeremy, the Second Amendment (Article II of the Constitution) came about because the British army would confiscate the guns of the colonists–by the way, the Third Amendment (Article III) also prohibits the billeting of soldiers in private citizens homes, which the British army also did–to prevent/inhibit uprisings of the colonists against the British government.
@Ostrander: There are those who claim that the real intention of the Second Amendment was to fend off the Federal government
@Jeremy Sims: can you even explain to me the intention of the second ammendment?
Actually, the folks who proclaim the 2nd Amendment have it almost exactly backwards.
At the time the US had no standing army. The young federal gov’t had no way to broadly enforce order, except through a militia made up of private citizens. Since they needed to be able to call on “regular folks” to form a militia, those folks would need to be able to have guns.
The “right to bear arms” wasn’t intended to allow private citizens to revolt against the gov’t they didn’t like. It was to enable the gov’t to put down revolts by private citizens.
Read up on Shay’s Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion.
I do think it’s way past time to say that the Second Amendment is a desperate need of an upgrade, that is to have a Second Amendment that reflects the needs of the 21st century America and not the needs of 200+ years ago.
Our country and it’s entire socitiy, culture, and technology have changed the Third Amendment is irrelevant and the needs for a standing miltra (we have the most powerful military in the world and if not the most powerful in the entire history of the world) and so is that part of the Second Amendment is completely irrelevant as well.
IF he could start there that certain parts of the Second Amendment are out of date and irrelevant and then talk in civil way about hunting, sport shooting, self-defence, and criminal uses of guns and what makes an “assault rifle” an actual assault rifle (is it the number bullets in a clip/drum, the rounds it can fire in a certain period of time, certain features, etc) then we can move this discussion from the usual attacks and name calling and gun safety laws that MIGHT help lower or stop the number of the horrible events like Aurora and Newtown from happening again.