Looney Tunes Cartoons Artist Addresses Backlash Over Elmer Fudd Gun Ban

An artist for Looney Tunes Cartoons questions if viewers “seriously care” whether Elmer Fudd wields his shotgun in the new animated series after Peter Browngardt, the show’s executive producer and showrunner, said the shorts releasing on HBO Max will not include guns as part of its depictions of cartoony violence. The befuddled hunter emerged as a trending topic on Twitter over Browngardt’s comments in The New York Times, where Browngardt said the Looney Tunes arsenal would no longer include guns despite being styled after classic cartoon shorts where typically gun-toting characters like Fudd and Yosemite Sam often fired their weapons on Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck.

“Do you guys SERIOUSLY care whether or not Elmer Fudd has a gun in our shorts? You know how many gags we can do with guns? Fairly few,” Michael Ruocco, an animator on New Looney Tunes and Looney Tunes Cartoons, tweeted Sunday. “And the best were already done by the old guys. It’s limiting. It was never about the gun, it was about Elmer’s flawed, challenged masculinity.”

In a followup tweet, Ruocco said the decision to disarm Fudd was a reaction to real-world gun violence, including the 2017 Las Vegas shooting — the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

“Also, think about context about what’s going on in the world, and how long ago our show started production. Late 2017, early 2018,” Ruocco tweeted. “Right on the heels of a record number of mass shootings, particularly the horrific one in Las Vegas. NOBODY wanted to touch guns working in media.”

“I personally did not care [about] or miss Elmer’s rifle,” Ruocco added in a subsequent tweet. “We got a lot more out of his personality and his lack of wit than any implement in his hands. Move on.” In a final tweet, Ruocco added the animators “got a lot more out of wordplay, dynamite and the character’s own naivety/stupidity than we ever did with guns.”

TNT and other dangerous products manufactured by the ACME corporation continue to have a presence in Looney Tunes Cartoons, which does not shy away from cartoony violence.

In the “Vincent Van Fudd” short, Fudd reacts with horror and regret when he believes he’s impaled Bugs with a palette knife after the wascally wabbit interrupts his attempt to become a great artist. Pretending to die from a wound made of red paint, an over-dramatic Bugs convinces Fudd to tug on a rope. When Fudd obliges the rabbit’s “last request,” he’s flattened by a falling anvil.

Other shorts depict Fudd pursuing Bugs with other weaponry, including an axe and a scythe.

Some have praised Warner Bros., who produces the series, for taking a stance on gun violence. Others called the removal of Fudd and Yosemite Sam’s guns “ridiculous,” with one person saying dropping Fudd’s gun is “like taking spinach away from Popeye.”