Is this the best explanation for Batman's no kill rule?

Is this the best explanation for Batman's no kill rule?

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this is
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>Adults...struggle desperately with fiction, demanding constantly that it conform to the rules of everyday life. Adults foolishly demand to know how Superman can possibly fly, or how Batman can possibly run a multibillion-dollar business empire during the day and fight crime at night, when the answer is obvious even to the smallest child: because it's not real.

No kill rules aren't so fucking complicated.

"The law" has three fuckin' categories: "Catch 'em", "prove they did it", and "punish them". Cops, courts, and jails.

Most capes only see the cops as flawed, and will not do what courts and jails are there do to. It's that simple.

The only reason we fucking argue about this shit is because it's not the cops in the fictional universe that readers don't trust, it's the jails.

My favorite reasoning is that Batman wants to believe in the justice system. He wants to believe that someday a court will find Joker guilty and execute him. But it's not up to him to make that call. He's there to assist the police with threats they're not equipped to handle themselves, not to be judge, jury, and executioner.

would it be better if the no-kill rule had never happened and villains like the joker just used body doubles and shit? Assuming DC wasn't able to endlessly get readers invested in an endless revolving cast of villains, which we know isn't feasible

This reasoning is stupid as Batman has already chosen to be judge and jury. By not also being executioner, he is enabling villains like the Joker and others who can't be rehabilitated. His theatrics have led to worse villains. Arguably, Gotham is worse off than it was when he started.

>Gotham is worse off than it was when he started.
This is a shitty meme. Gotham would have burned to ground if not for Batman.

>Batman has already chosen to be judge and jury

Batman witnesses crimes or finds evidence of them, and leaves said evidence and the perpetrators in bat-cuffs for Gordon to collect.

That has nothing in common with the judicial process.

Batman stalks and pummels people based on his own judgement. And to go beyond that, he's a violent psychopath who has used children to play hero. His inability to properly cope with his parents's death have led to a lot of death and suffering in Gotham. The day he drops dead, Gotham will be better off.

The Dark Knight Returns has the best explanation.
As tough and cool and collected as Batman is, the idea of killing someone triggers him super hard and makes him get all queasy.

The one thing Batman is afraid of is killing someone; he actually just doesn't have the balls to do it, even if it's objectively for the greater good.

Fuck all this "IF YOU KILL HIM, YOU'LL BE JUST AS BAD" and "ONCE YOU START DOWN THAT PATH, YOU'LL JUST KEEP MURDERING EVERYONE YOU MEET" moral highground shit. Batman can't kill people because he's mentally incapable of making that call. For all of his skills and talents, for as smart as he is, that's his one fatal flaw. And it hurts people every single time someone like Joker lives to escape from Arkham again and again.

>based on his own judgement.

No, he uses pummeling as an apprehension tool on criminal suspects.

This makes no fucking sense either, OK he might not be able to actively try and kill someone but what about all the times he's stopped other people from doing it? Just because he can't deal with it doesn't automatically means that others can't.

If he's not able to take a life and is conscious of this flaw what fucking business does he have by stopping other people? I am not saying that he should let everyone kill their neighbor but he already had the opportunity to let someone just kill off the Joker many, many, many times even if he has the moral obligation to send the person to jail later on it would be way better than not killing him and let him bomb the next orphanage.

The explanation I always ran with was that, deep down, Bruce knows that his life as Batman is insane and ridiculous, and he tells himself that some day in the future, it'll stop and he'll move on.

The reason he doesn't kill is because if he did, it would implicitly be admitting that there's a line you can cross that you can't come back from, and if there is, then he'd have to admit that he's likely already crossed it in his life.

The common sense reason everyone ignores: cops are more willing to work or at least tolerate a non lethal batman. A killer batman has to be distracted by cops on his ass and beat them up constantly. Gordon won't be there giving him insider advice, there's no bat signal, and beyond that there's no Justice League back up, no Superman on speed dial.

>it's the jails

No, it's the court.

the only good actor in this scene was alfred

So if going out and shooting up people every night is such an easy decision to make, why aren't you fucks doing it?

Yes, exactly.

A killer Batman has to be a Batman that DOESN'T work with the police.

Batman's transition to "I don't kill" is synonymous with the character's transition to working closely with Gordon.

Basically a vigilante who kills is too much of an obvious criminal himself.

It's the jails. The reason "Why doesn't Batman kill the Joker?" is a thing is because he supervillains always escape Belle Reve/Iron Heights/Arkham/Stryker's Island.

You can't blame the courts because the juries are finding them guilty when they're tried and the judges are passing appropriate sentences for states that don't HAVE the death penalty.

The heroes don't find the courts effective, which is why they often work with the police and try to gather damning evidence, but they're still given light sentences or sent to asylums because of lawyers or technicalities, or because of assumed "brutality" prior to their arrest.

What's a no kill rule?

A lot of shit about the courts not being able to nail someone if a vigilante caught them is more often than not fanon.

Arkham at this point has "asylum" in the name but is more like a legit penitentiary for prisoners with special needs. Blackgate would have Mr. Freeze if they could afford to build a refrigerated cell.

There are a few good explanations.

One is , pragmatics. Another is the fact that the superhero genre is very business oriented, and having a superhero that kills is bad for business because it means memorable villains are difficult to keep around.

Personally, I've always liked the idea that it's mostly just psychological scarring from seeing his parents gunned down in cold blood. I don't get why Batman's reasoning for not killing needs to be rational; it's makes for a more interesting character when it isn't.

Batman's mission is not to kill criminals but to prevent them from committing crimes at all. He's not fueled by pure revenge, he's fueled by the need for justice. He wants a world where no 8 year old boy can lose his parents. The answer to that is not killing people, but preventing them from dying and lending himself to let superstitions be made about him as to deter criminal behavior. Batman does not seek out "bad guys" to simply kick their ass because Mommy and Daddy died, he does it because the underworld will no doubt talk about him and fear him. He never provides an answer on what he "is" to the criminals other than "I'm Batman" so of course rumors are going to spread with some people thinking he kills and others not. Even if his existence is known to the civilian public, they don't know what he does. They just know that he's hung out with the Justice League, but little else. Hell, maybe some people think he has super powers because of that too which only adds to the mystery. The only reliable sources of data on Batman are from intimate retellings by those who have known him in recurring instances -- that being supervillains and superheroes. The public therefore has little way of knowing Batman's motives. This causes potential acts of violence by those who would initially inflict them to hesitate before committing to such behaviors, therefore making it so that the threat of the potential Batman suppresses criminals. If he were to kill, though, that would be too much as this is not a mission of vengeance, but of justice. It isn’t justified to kill a random mugger. Instead, scare it so much and have it be never heard from again by his friends as he goes to jail. If Gordon found out that Batman did kill and others knew for sure, then it'd be crossing that line. The Batman should only stop and save lives, not make a point to take them for that is not his mission.

cont.

When the deed is done and he can avoid killing the criminal, it is only rational that he does not, for he is doing this to prevent them from being made again whilst simultaneously scaring them out of their ways. The supervillains are those who oppose his school of thought, though in that they don't change afterwards. This is tough because Batman wants to believe they can since he truly believes we are all capable of changing because he believes in "nurture" more than "nature" and that it's our upbringing and emotional impacts (like Bruce’s parents dying and his vow) that define us and make sense of who we are and the world we make. His foes, however, are the foil to this thesis of his, most significantly the Joker. The Joker has nothing to offer Batman on who he is, why he exists, and more importantly "how" he came to be. He is everything Batman is afraid of because he defies everything Batman needs to have faith in. The Joker thinks that “I’m crazy because everything is crazy and killing doesn’t make a difference because nothing makes sense about who we are for it is ultimately pointless bla bla bla” to where Batman’s counter argument is “we make our own sense, we mare our own points,” and ultimately, as to why he still lets Joker live, “we make ourselves crazy and that’s what you are, Joker, and you can stop it”. That’s why Batman “loses” if he kills Joker and why the Joker wants Batman to kill him when he can: because the Joker doesn't care if he dies or not in that specific scenario (and, in fact, maybe he’d love to die by Batman since he is the only sense of true meaning he has left in his world of madness). If Batman kills him, then Batman would be proving Joker’s argument that “we’re crazy and we can’t change that unless you kill me because life is crazy and things just are”.

cont.

So Batman, even though he won’t kill because it goes against his whole purpose of why he donned the cape and cowl (not for sheer vengeance, but justice), struggles to show that “we make our own sense” and that we are who we are because we change and grow by how we’re nurtured. He has no clues to how Joker was nurtured, and that really scares him. He truly believes that “something” is responsible for Joker and desperately wants Joker to realize that it’s his own train of thought that allows him to be crazy; he’s only crazy and nothing makes sense to him because he had a bad day and was convinced that the world was a cruel joke. And, even if Batman knows that Joker will never turn over a new leaf, he can’t kill him as that’d only prove Joker’s point, and thus nullifying the reasons for a Batman. So, Batman’s stuck in this philosophical paradox. If he kills Joker, it means the Joker is right and Batman should not be. If he lets Joker live, no progress will be made on the Joker himself, other lives will be lost, but the message of what Batman is trying to do is still there in his own actions at least. And Batman hates Joker for this. He hates that Joker makes no sense. He hates the Joker because he is the one criminal that can prove Batman wrong. The Joker is the one asking “why don’t you kill me, Batman? I’ll kill everyone else anyways!” to which Batman can only say “Because I can’t. I hate you, I want you to die, but you have to see why you’re wrong, even if it means forever.” Batman might save the day enough to convince Cobblepot (who is of similar background to Bruce) that he and him can be friends. He might one day save Harvey Dent from being Two Face. Hell, he’s already got Catwoman on the bandwagon for the most part. And Robin...Robin is one of Batman’s prime examples of what he believes: that nurture defines of more than nature.

cont

It was by providing Dick Grayson with an outlet that wasn’t pure darkness after such trauma that Batman could establish justice over the need for bloodthirsty vengeance.

This explains why batman wanted to kill Darkseid even though he won’t kill Joker. Darkseid was sane in his diabolical nature. He is Darkseid because he is born evil not only in the way he was nurtured, but because that is just how he is in the universe…but Darkseid wouldn’t stop as he is pure evil in everything, nature and nurture alike. There was no turning Darkseid over and no realization that he was crazy — because he’s not. Darkseid is perfectly sane. He’s just an evil dick from space. The Joker, on the other hand, is a crazy guy who believes he is of the same nature as Darkseid by being inherently evil, thinking that nothing makes sense and that it’s just how things go in this crazy universe of ours. The Joker is therefore misguided in his thought. He’s crazy. Darkseid is not. Darkseid is a part of nature that wants to be all. So Batman let's Joker live reluctantly, because he has to according to his own beliefs that Joker was nurtured wrongly, whereas Darkseid is just naturally evil and diabolical.

END. Hopefully that explains Batman's reasoning.

Just to be clear, this is not supposed to be 100% reasonable; this is just an explanation for how Bruce/Batman thinks and explains certain actions of his. For example: Batman forgiving Harley Quinn in Injustice follows this reasoning that I've written out here because he believes that she's changed her ways for good. It's still shit writing on the surface level and was probably not what the writers intended, but this narrative fits.

I could go on about this forever, really.