Here’s a fun tidbit for anybody wanting to start up a discussion on gun rights.
Captain America: Civil War recently opened in theaters to great box office success continuing Marvel’s trend of making ridiculous amounts of money off their cinematic universe. As everybody knows, these characters are ripped straight from the comics, but less well known is the fact that the stories themselves are often retooled adaptations of specific comic storylines. The newest Marvel movie is based off an incredibly popular comic series called Civil War published back in 2006, and unbeknownst to the vast majority of comic book readers, it makes a nigh perfect case defending the Second Amendment.
In the comic book version of Civil War (nothing in this article will spoil the movie), a group of superheroes who are part of a reality TV show botch an attempt to apprehend a super villain. Instead of putting down the villain quickly away from the public, the showboating heroes give the villain enough time to use his powers to cause an explosion that vaporizes a grade school and all the students inside. This high publicity incident causes a swell of popular outcry against superpowers, and the politicians soon draft the Superhero Registration Act which requires all people with superpowers to register with the government. If super powered people wish to continue using their powers, they must submit to training and work as government agents.
Iron Man becomes the leading figure for the pro-Registration movement believing that opposition to the wave of populist outcry for government oversight would be futile and thinking that as chief organizer of the movement he can create a stronger force of super heroes by making moderate and common sense reforms. In contrast, Captain America believes that people have the fundamental right to use their powers and abilities to help themselves and others and therefore refuses to support the Superhuman Registration Act condemning it for oppressing the individual and violating civil rights. The superheroes choose sides over the issue, and shortly after the government begins regulating superhuman activity, it becomes an all out superhero civil war as Iron Man’s forces begin to imprison heroes simply for defending themselves and their community.
Ostensibly, the entire Civil War story arc presented two differing and equally defendable points of view and readers were supposed to decide which side they supported, but the story was clearly written with Captain America as the protagonist and his side as the virtuous one which left readers almost unanimously landing on the anti-Registration side of the argument, but it’s less clear how many comic readers understood how closely the Registration Act corresponded to real life gun control measures.
Isn’t a gun basically a superpower? It grants great strength to normal people who would otherwise be at the mercy of the strong. It allows people to defend themselves and other innocents, and according to the Founding Fathers and the Constitution, gun ownership is a civil right, yet every time a mass shooting occurs at a school or any other location, some people get scared and demand stronger gun regulation. Many say guns should only be in the hands of the government, but more moderate gun control advocates say we need “common sense reforms” allowing private ownership of guns but giving government regulatory oversight of who is allowed to have guns, how you keep track of guns, what guns are allowed, what kind of training is necessary for gun possession and where and when you are allowed to use guns. It’s the Superhero Registration Act.
This pro-2nd Amendment message can be found to a certain degree in the movie as well, but in the film, political implications are overshadowed by interpersonal conflict leaving the overall message a bit muddled. Still, the basic idea in the movie remains that the government wants all those with power under their thumb and under their control, and that’s a message that most people will reject while watching the movie and all people should reject in real life, so if you know people who like Marvel movies and support gun control, point out the similarities between regulating superpowers and regulating weapons. Maybe they’ll see the hypocrisy in opposing jail time for someone who has a suit of armor that can rip through buildings while they applauding efforts to imprison people for having a magazine with eleven rounds instead of ten.
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