This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
This entry has been about people who will do anything short of guns, and I'm wondering — is it a separate trope, or a subset of this one, when a character is willing to commit violence as long as it doesn't kill? Vash the Stampede was the first example that came to mind (he uses guns without killing). Or the comic-book Daredevil, who is very preachy about never killing, but uses torture for information and getting people to testify in court. Batman is an example of both — no guns, no death, plenty of maiming.
Semiapies: I think there's a difference between the "no killing, will kick your butt" heroes and the "killing's fine, but guns/swords/blasters are icky" ones.
Red Shoe: Yes, but I think that most of the examples on TV shoot for "no killing" and end up hitting "will kill, but guns are icky" by accident.
Red Shoe: I'm a little bothered by the rephase of "There are lots of reasons to hate guns," to something which I'm sure the editor thought was more politically neutral. My objection is this: *Regardless* of one's politics, the *reasons* exist. I don't think there's anyone in the mainstream who actually believes that there's no good reason to dislike guns (A person who believed that way wouldn't just like guns, they'd think anyone who didn't like guns was insane). What depends on your politics isn't whether or not there are good reasons, but whether or not those reasons outweigh the reasons on the other side. More importantly, the fact that some people feel differently isn't relevant to the context and it makes the flow of the paragraph stumble off onto a tangent. I didn't want to change it back and risk starting a revision war without trying to settle it diplomatically.
// Well, it depends on one's politics. Guns are inanimate objects, like bricks, steak knives, stuffed animals, and anvils—dead things with no mind and no volition of their own. To many of us, particularly in the "red states," the statement "I hate guns" is rather surreal, not unlike saying "I hate power tools and have sworn personal vengeance against the electric saw that a criminal used to maim my father." Human beings have the capacity to choose to do good or evil; to invest inanimate objects with this capacity is eccentric at best, superstitious at worst.
I dislike the things some humans choose to do with guns, and I dislike those people who choose to do such things, but the instrumentality employed to do an evil deed is beside the point and to harp on it strikes me as rather odd.
I'm just sayin'.
Darksasami: Problem solved. I blamed it on "some people," which is a weasely way out of just about anything. Now back to the show. If you want to have a gun control debate, go to Fark.
The Editor: is the Doctor Who example meant to be "The Seeds of Death" (Patrick Troughton) or "The Seeds of Doom" (Tom Baker)
Osh: Do the Gargoyles really have a thing against killing? They certainly don't have any problem with it back in the Middle Ages, even if it is self-defense. That kind of smells of an issue Disney probably didn't want to get into.
Semiapies: In an early episode after they awaken in the present day, Goliath is alarmed when Demona goes to throw some unconscious mooks to their deaths. He says something to the effect that killing "in the heat of battle" is one thing, but this is something else entirely. More of a code-of-honor thing than faux pacifism.
Seth: I want to link The Theme Park Version to Technical Pacifist but am unsure how to phrase it. Basically we have the original characters who disliked guns. People who accidentally shot their mates as kids or like batman saw someone they loved shot to death. This has been watered down over the years to the point we have characters like the Rock in Welcome to the jungle or that dude from the venture brothers who refuse to use guns but never say why and have no problem killing by other means.
What i need is a way to phrase that long mind leak and turn it into a workable sentence. Any takers?
Mister Six: My experience of the X-Men comics is limited to flicking through some of the Grant Morrison issues and then deciding I couldn't be arsed, but isn't modern Wolverine pretty much fine with chopping people up?
Ununnilium: Yeah, he definitely outright kills people. I'm yanking it.
- Pacifists do not get much more technical than the comic book version of Wolverine. The writers want to portray the character as a dangerous psychopath who is only barely in league with the good guys, but due to the Marvel universe ranking high on the "idealism" side of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism, they don't allow him to actually kill anyone, instead throwing robots, zombies and near misses at him — anything to stop him from actually stabbing a human being to death.
- Uh... no, you're thinking of the cartoon version of Wolverine. In the comics he regularly kills people, for one reason or another. A lot of these are just common or garden mooks who happen to get in his way. Some of those mooks could be taken as some kind of zombie or robot (or magical ninja who turn to dust when you kill them), but a lot of them are very clearly human. He's also killed a few named characters, including Cable's evil son Tolliver. When he's actually with the X-Men he usually tones it down, mostly because he's a team player, but on his solo missions he'll often kill dozens of people an issue (thousands, in one particularly absurd arc in which he took on the Hand).
Ununnilium: "This editor speculates that the Doctor, having only a handful of regenerations left, may be afraid that he's turning into the Valeyard." Ooooh. You should put that in Wild Mass Guessing.
Mister Six: Removed the following, because it's not about guns and because I have no idea what heading it should go under:
- Not guns, but a classic and explicit case of Technical Pacifist: Clerics in D&D and other RPGs were originally not allowed to use cutting weapons (in settings where firearms don't exist), because "they are Men(or Women) of God" not allowed to shed blood. This leaves them with a pretty impressive arsenal of bludgeoning weapons, of course, on the logic that these supposedly don't actually draw blood. In the case of D&D, this limitation was dropped in the 3rd Edition.
I think right now there's still a lot of confusion between the 'no guns' version of this trope, and the 'no killing' variation. I think we do have Thou Shalt Not Kill for the latter, but right now it seems awfully comic-focused.
Should the 'no killing' examples be moved into Thou Shalt Not Kill (and that article expanded to 'no killing' in general rather than just in comics), so that this article can focus mainly on the 'no guns' variation?
Personally, I'd lump Thou Shalt Not Kill and Technical Pacifist under the latter name since that name suggests the 'no killing' trope more, and make a new 'anti-gun' article with a name which more clearly invokes its true meaning. What do you think?
Count Choculitis: We now have a "No Guns" trope; it's Doesn't Like Guns.
As for Thou Shalt Not Kill and Technical Pacifist: there is a distinction made between the two, it's just not a very good one, in my view. Thou Shalt Not Kill: no killing people, ever. Technical Pacifist: Beats people up as much as he wants, may not feel compelled to save the villain, and may take actions that Fridge Logic would suggest probably led to someone's death, but other than that, no killing people, ever. The first two clauses are in no way incompatible with Thou Shalt Not Kill, and the Fridge Logic deaths would seem to be more carelessness on the writer's part, rather than a distinct trope being employed.
The whole distinction between the two seems a bit The Same But More to me (or perhaps The Same But More Specific). It seems like slightly different interpretations of the same "don't kill people, ever" code that could easily be covered by the same trope (especially since half the entries are duplicates of each other anyway).
I personally favor lumping the two under Thou Shalt Not Kill. "Technical Pacifist" annoys the crap out of me because Pacifism Does Not Work That Way.
The_Mess: I'm not sure about the etiquette, but I'm removing Hawkeye Pierce from the list. He's not a technical pacifist, he's an outright pacifist. While he did make the long speech about guns, he wouldn't kill people, period.
Your Obedient Serpent just removed the following:
- Originally, however, he subverted this trope, feeling it was his job to destroy the scum Gotham Police couldn't, as an act of revenge for his parents' deaths. Moreover, ((spoiler:he used the gun that was used to kill them)).
...because it's flat-out wrong. The Batman Chronicles are out and easily available, people. Sure, Bruce never shed a tear over the [[Self-Disposing Villain]]s that he encountered early on, but it's not hard to determine that, in those early stories, Batman used a gun exactly once, on the otherwise-unstoppable Monster Men, and expressed remorse at having to resort to that at all.
The allegation in the "spoiler" is nowhere in any early Batman story.
Times like this, I see why "Citation Needed" is plastered all over That Other Wiki.
