After watching batman throw around explosives left and right I no longer believe batman doesn't use guns because of some sort of moral quandary but rather he just prefers the challenge.
Bruce Wayne is just another billionaire who likes to get dressed up in leather and beat the underprivileged of gotham. The problem is guns are too quick. He needs to teach these people the lesson that it's wrong to be poor. And he needs to teach that lesson through pain and permanent physical disfigurement. All whilst bruce's erection slowly wears its way through his cod piece, beating after beating, suit spunk after suit spunk.
I think people are questioning the ethics of Batman more these days given how discussions around poverty and crime has changed. Given how crime is more often than not a result of poverty and a lack of social safety net than greed or lack of morals, the ethics of Batman bypassing the justice system1 and beating the shit out of henchman comes into question.
My exposure to this line of thinking was FD Signifier's video on edge lords, but I haven't seen other people talk about it until now.
1. the justice system also fails these people but we'll ignore that for the sake of argument
Plenty of people will say that. This is a really good dismantling of the whole concept by thoughtslime, where he basically points out how contradictory and malleable the entire character is, and he can be written as an authoritarian but usually isnt, plus some other stuff I don't remember: https://youtu.be/73M2sq9zK-I?si=GoJ4paPDgqBskdos
Also it's unlisted because it's in the raft of videos thoughtslime has decided are outdated, bad, or have problematic elements. Idk what it is about this video that got it on the list, but I feel it's important to mention.
He doesn't use guns because he specifically doesn't like them. If it were just about killing, he'd use nonlethal bullets. The no killing rule is a separate but related phenomenon.
As for explosives, he generally only uses flash bangs, but when he's fighting someone who can clearly take it (like Superman or Darkseid) or a robot that it's okay to kill, then he uses more lethal bombs.
You address it in the first part of your comment but if batman has no problem using lethal bombs than why not a gun? That is where I am at.
It has to be he specifically doesn't like guns. Other commentors say he doesn't like guns because his parents were shot. Which is fine but kinda misses the point imo. It's like he heard someone say, "guns don't kill people, people kill people." Then was like nuh-uh but never moved that logic to, I dont know, incendiary weapons. Anyway, I'm way out in the weeds here.
The man threw a batarang into the barrel of a gun. Surely he could master non-lethal force with a hand gun or something.
A batman that uses guns is not as entertaining. I can agree on that much.
Yeah, he specifically doesn't like guns, and it's because his parents were shot. Other weapons are fine. Even a grappling gun is fine. A gun that shoots bullets is not fine because it reminds him of how his parents died.
He has deep seeded trauma about guns that make him think about himself as the same type of murderer that killed his parents, whenever he thinks about using a gun.
It looks like that because Switzerland has mandatory military service and after that people keep their service rifle at home (without ammunition). But it's not at all comperable to the gun situation in America.
What incarnation are you talking about where he throws "explosives" out left and right? Not every explosive is lethal. A smoke bomb is technically an explosive.