What you know about Batman is wrong

As I visit my favorite sites to celebrate Batman day, I often come across posts by "experts" that are riddled with inaccuracies about my favorite fictional hero. 

The one that grinds my gears the most is the idea that "In the early days, Batman used a gun all of the time." While not incorrect, it is also wrong. Let's explore the history of the "gun-wielding" Batman.

Most "experts" use the above image from Detective Comics #35 as their proof of "Batman using a gun all of the time". Let's ignore the fact that this is a splash image that has nothing to do with the story, in that actual story, doesn't even carry, let allow use a gun in the actual issue. As it has nothing to do with the continuity, I think this is a straw man in the "gun-wielding Batman" case.

 

In Detective Comics #31-32, Batman does use a gun - twice - to dispatch the Mad Monk and Dala, who are actually vampires. At the end of the story, Batman fires silver bullets into the creatures. Since the vampires are already dead (undead) does this really count? I think not.

 
On the cover of Detective Comics #33, Batman is shown with a holster on his utility belt but in the actual story, he fires the gun, not to kill anyone, but to detonate a deadly death ray machine.

 

This house ad from DC comics does nothing to dispel the idea of Batman as a gun-wielding vigilante hero.

In Detective Comics #36, the holster is gone, and Batman uses a gun taken from defeated henchmen to fire a shot to draw the attention of the police, who will presumably come to arrest the minions.

We see the most gun play in Batman #1 when Batman fights madmen that Hugo Strange has transformed into monstrous creatures and outfitted with bullet proof outfits. Batman uses his Batplane mounted machine gun to first shoots a truck filled with monsters, causing it to crash and presumably kill everyone inside, including Strange's human henchmen. Then he uses the machine gun to knock another monster off a skyscraper, which it had climbed King Kong-style.

The last golden age story in which Batman shoots a gun, this time to disarm a gunman, is in Batman #4. But the text states that "The Batman never carries or kills with a gun."  

That rule obviously doesn't apply to Robin! In Batman #6, Robin forces the hand of a killer to shoot himself in the head!

Gun-wielding Batman shows up once in the silver age in Detective Comics #327 when Batman takes a gun from a crook to keep him and his accomplices at bay. He never fires the weapon.

The cover of Detective Comics #575 shows Batman wielding a pistol, but I think this is just for shock value, since the character hadn't used a gun in over twenty years. In the story, Batman debates using a gun on Joe Chill, the killer of his parents, but decides against it.

Batman wields a machine gun on the cover of Detective Comics #710 but in the story, he uses a rifle to disarm assassin Gunhawk after being goaded by Deathstroke the Terminator to use the rifle.

 

In the Elseworld story The Dark Knight, Batman fires a machine gun at a mutant who has kidnapped a child. It is presumed by the image that he has killed the kidnapper. But maybe not. Maybe he just wounded her?

Later in the story, he fires a cable from a rifle to swing to Two-Face's helicopter to prevent a bomb from exploding.

Is Dark Knight's Batman a hypocrite. In Dark Knight Triumphant, he snaps a rifle in half, calling it "The weapon of the enemy" and that he "will not use it." He also calls a gun a "coward's weapon" and "a liar's weapon."

In modern stories, Batman knows how to use guns, he just doesn't. His dislike of the weapons prevents him from using them. It is also well established that Batman does not kill. 

Even the Joker, who, between you and me, Batman should have killed decades ago.

 
Although that doesn't stop him from using the grappling hook gun first introduced in the Batman movie (1989). Does this make Batman a "gun-wielding" hero? I think not.