What Would The Punisher Do?

I get random thought sometimes.

All sorts of things can set my mind wandering down a path, just small ideas that cause mental detours, roads leading off to unknown mental destinations, like in the Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy is shown to the yellow brick road, and it begins in a spiral of red and yellow bricks, and it makes me thing; "That means there's a red brick road too.  Where does it lead?  Is there a Sapphire City too?  Because that makes the most sense as far as the color wheel is concerned."

See what I mean?

So an offhand joke got me thinking about the comic book character the Punisher, and gun control.  Normally it is sort of an NRA punchline, but I started actually thinking about the question: what would the Punisher's views be on gun control?

Now just to start out, I want to be clear that this is not a political post.  I am not expressing my own views on the subject, nor am I looking to engage anyone in a discussion of gun control laws in general. This post is a character study, dealing with one particular character in regards to what has been shown about him over the years.

Comic book discussion, not political debate, right?  So keep the vitriol in the holster (which is a bad metaphor, I mean a holster would be a terrible place to keep actual vitriol... but I digress.)

For those unfamiliar with the character in question, the Punisher is a Marvel Comics character, originally created in the 1970's as an antagonist in the pages of Spider Man.  He went on to become extremely popular in his own right, appearing in several of his own series' over the years.  For many fans, he is the quintessential antihero, a very polarizing figure, and the poster child of comics' 'Dark Age' of the late 1980's and early 90's.

His real name is Lt. Frank Castle, a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam War veteran.  Highly trained in all aspects of warfare, he served several tours in Vietnam before coming home to start a family.  One day, while picnicking in Central Park, his family had the misfortune to witness the Mafia interrogating a traitor, and they were gunned down to avoid any witnesses.  Frank survived, but his wife and two children did not.

From that point onward, he adopted the identity of the Punisher, and waged a one man war on criminals, especially the various organized crime syndicates in New York.  What sets Frank apart from other revenge-driven vigilantes in comic books (other than a lack of goofy animal-themed gadgets,) is his military approach to his calling.  Many writers fail to remember this, but the Punisher's concept is at its best when he is shown prosecuting his quest to eliminate crime in the context as a war.

He plans his attacks, gathering intel on his targets using surveillance, infiltration, and other techniques he learned in the Marines.  He then plans his assaults to grant himself the greatest possible tactical advantage, and carries out strikes against his targets with military precision.

And that's the other (and most controversial) difference between the Punisher and other costumed vigilantes that star in their own titles: he has no qualms about taking lives.  His war on crime is a literal one, and that requires casualties.  He is not interested in rehabilitating criminals, because he is not a police officer.  He is a soldier, and once he has identified an enemy, he seeks to neutralize that enemy with lethal force.  He employs deadly weaponry in the form of actual, existing firearms, instead of fantastic (and far less realistic) non-lethal weapons like webs or batarangs.

Many have complained about the lousy example set by a comic book protagonist whose sole aim is the systematic murder of those he considers criminals, although to be fair, his targets are the worst kind of scum, and the comics make their guilt in heinous crimes quite clear.  And the best Punisher writers explore that concept, asking how hard the police would work to stop a vigilante that only targets violent  criminals.

But now, what about the gun control issue?

The Punisher loves his guns.  And it is quite clear that many of his artists, writers and editors do as well.  In the narration, ("Punisher's war journal" entries,) Frank loves to name-drop his weaponry, and extols the virtues of the various guns (and other implements of killitude) he employs.  Usually, this is a writer or artist indulging in mentioning one of his favorite weapons himself.  One editor, Eliot R. Brown, a weaponry aficionado, even went so far as to write and illustrate 10 whole issues of the "Punisher Armory," a series of nothing more than illustrated entries of the Punisher talking about various guns, knives, explosives, vehicles, surveillance gear, and other equipment used in his campaign.  Ten issues with no story, no action, no dialogue, just full page illustrations of guns and narration by Frank talking about them.  Nonetheless, they are highly sought-after collectibles these days (I have the whole set, and wouldn't sell them to buy my child a new kidney.)

So that must mean that Frank would be a card-carrying member of the NRA and would fight tooth and nail (and RPG and Claymore, and...) against any attempt to regulate the rights of Americans to purchase, possess and carry weapons, right?  I mean we are talking about a soldier who fought for America, as well as man who wields such deadly instruments in a crusade for justice, obviously this one is a no-brainer.

And that's the thing; it's such a no-brainer that I never bothered to brain it at all.  "Punisher like guns, him must like NRA and hate gun laws."  Many treat him as a psychotic figure, driven only by a lust for violence and the report of a gun the only voice he has to vent the scream that dwells forever inside him. I'm looking at you, Garth Ennis.  But he wasn't always portrayed that way.  Originally, he was meant to be a more conflicted character.

Frank Castle wasn't motivated to become the Punisher out of a love for violence.  He lived with violence in the war, and came home to start over.  His new life was supposed to be free from the killing and bloodshed.  But those dreams of a simple life were stripped away from him in a hail of gunfire.

The Punisher exists as one man's (misguided certainly,) opposition to gun violence.

Although it is never a good idea to generalize any group of people in an issue, most people who oppose stricter regulations of firearm possession (I hate to use the term 'gun control,' but I gotta admit, it's much less of a pain to type,) take the position that the government should not interfere with private individuals  purchasing and keeping guns, and many add, completely anonymously.

But the Punisher isn't interested in owning guns legally.  He is fully aware that his actions are not legal in the slightest way.  He sees himself as above the law, because he is waging war, not a civil action.  So he equips himself with military grade hardware.  He wouldn't care about an "assault weapons" ban (a term which I've discussed previously,) because he uses actual assault rifles.  And rocket launchers, and grenades, and flamethrowers, etc.  He freely uses hardware that even civilian law agencies are forbidden to use.  He does not hold himself to those same rules because he is not a civilian in his own mind.

Frank Castle does not need the NRA or any other group out there protecting his rights to own firearms, because he is perfectly fine with illegally acquiring them himself and using them in the commission of multiple capital felonies.  So he's probably not joining up for the free death and dismemberment insurance.

But the paradoxical thing is that the Punisher respects the law.  He believes in the importance of law and order in the maintaining of polite society.  He never shoots at cops doing their duty, even when that duty is trying to shoot at him as a dangerous criminal.  On more than one occasion he has chosen capture over harming a cop.  He goes after people who commit violent crimes.  He doesn't go try to topple world dictators (at least most of the time; the 90's were a weird time for all of us,) or kill wealthy industrialists whose shady business practices create unhealthy working conditions for factory workers, he kills criminals.  Drug pushers, murderers, child molesters, extortionists, and most importantly, weapons dealers.

The Punisher goes after weapons dealers.

He sees no conflict in pointing out that such individuals spread death and suffering.  If he hears that an outfit is selling AK-47's to kids on the street, he will roll up in his sweet battle van and pop copious amounts of caps into all the related asses.  He doesn't moralize about how they are just businessmen trying to make money by providing American citizens with the products they want, allowing them to avoid the needless hassle of the 'nanny state's' regulations, he shoots them in the face, and moralizes about how he just saved countless lives by keeping these guns off the street.  Then he loads up the guns to add to his arsenal, and any he doesn't want he destroys.

The reason he does not see this as a conflict, as I have said before, is that Frank does not consider himself as a civilian.  He does not have to follow the same laws that others do, because he is above, or at least beyond that.  To Frank, he is something of a martyr.  He has to go out and fight, go out and kill, to make the world safe for the good, decent people of New York, and America in general.  He is not bound by the same laws, just as he can never enjoy the same privileges.

And what are those privileges that he is forever denied?  The right to have a normal life, a happy family, an existence that is safe from the looming threat of gun violence.  All the things he thought he had, and which he thought he would be able to keep, before they were all ripped away from him one day in Central Park.

He became the Punisher because the criminals would not let him be Frank Castle.

So let's consider the factors here; Frank wants to protect people, even at the expense of certain rights (not every citizen is comfortable with a guy wearing a skull on his chest riding around town with grenade launchers and satchel charges acting on their behalf,) he sees guns as a solution, only to the problems created by guns, and only when it is he himself who uses those guns.  He feels those laws never apply to him anyway, and his usual reaction to seeing someone with a gun is to shoot them.

So how would he react to gun control?  I think he'd be all for it, in theory.  I think that he would have no problem rounding up all the guns that weren't safely stored in one of his own store houses (or on military bases, in the hands of soldiers so they can never be misused, ahem,) and throwing them all into a furnace to be melted down.

Because if you could get rid of the guns, then fewer families would be slaughtered in Central Park.  In theory.

But even in the fake world of Marvel Comics, one has to look at the real world.  And in both real worlds, bad guys are still going to get their hands on guns.  And you can make al the arguments you wish about how limiting guns might decrease accidental shootings, suicides, and make it harder for low level criminals (especially kids,) from getting their hands on guns by breaking into their neighbor's houses, but you can never get rid of all the guns, or all the violent hands into which those guns end up.

And that's why the Punisher can't be Frank Castle again, and why he will die without ever achieving his goal.  Because he is not fighting criminals, or even crime.  He is fighting his own sense of grief and guilt.  And he personifies those feeling as violence.  So he is fighting against violence with the only tool he knows how to use: violence.

You see?  The Punisher is a tragedy.

So the Punisher would not be lending his voice to speak against the idea of regulating gun ownership.  Because the gun and he are locked in a perpetual cycle of hatred and dependence, and the gun is going to win.  Besides, would either side be happy with claiming him as a spokesman?

But in the end, it doesn't really matter what Frank Castle might think of the issue of gun control, his voice does not matter, partly because he's a fictional character.

But also because he's a convicted felon, and therefore can't even vote, so screw that guy anyway.