Batman is a highly skilled crime fighter. He has spent his life training and honing his mind and body. He faces incredible and deadly villains everyday. His costume offers minimal protection against his deadly foes and the threat of gunfire from low level street thugs.

Besides his hand-to-hand fighting skills, Batman has an arsenal of Bat-gadgets at his disposal. Up until recently, Batman had to figure out how to manufacture and pay for all his weapons and tools. Being a billionaire doesn't hide the fact that he is still responsible for file taxes and explaining to the board of directors at Wayne Enterprise where all the money goes.

One of Batman's most valuable gadgets has been the Batarang. This simple device has saved his life on countless occasions. Able to throw them with expert precission, the Batarang can be used to easily disarmed the cowardly thugs brandishing firearms. It can also be used to knock out or disable crooks as they try to flee from a crime scene. There has also been occasions where Batman has used a Batarang to free himself from a villains insane but deadly trap.

With all the Batarangs Batman has used and thrown around over the years, what happens to all the discarded ones? Is it safe for Batman to simply leave them lying around the streets of Gotham City?

Batarangs most likely aren't cheap to make. It's possible Batman is able to have them mass produced somehow but it's not something that can be made without careful attention to detail. Batman needs to know the balance and design of each one in order to affectively throw them at his target. I don't think he would have the time to test out each individual one before hitting the streets. That's time being taken away from apprehending criminals and saving innocent lives. Cost might not be a big factor for Batman, especially now that Bruce Wayne has publicly announced he is funding Batman's crusade against evil. It still seems like a waste of money to just leave them lying around.

Before the world knew about Wayne Enterprises providing tech and gadgets for Batman, he would have to be careful not to leave any incriminating evidence behind. As the world's greatest detective, he knows the slightest clue is enough to reveal the truth. Batman would have to be sure he never handled a Batarang without gloves. They can't be any traces of fingerprints or DNA from him or whomever manufactures them. This is just another reason he shouldn't leave them in the streets.

Even though Batman is against brutally disabling his opponents, the Batarang could easily be used as a deadly weapon. Seeing how they are able to be thrown and lodged into a brick wall, you can imagine what they would do if thrown at a person's chest. The tips or edges could also be used to slice a person's throat. How easy would it be for someone to commit murder and use a found Batarang in order to try to frame Batman? This is something that has happened to Spider-Man when some rogue police officers left discarded Spider-Tracers at the scene of crimes.

With Batman's brilliant and calculating mind, keeping track of where and when he threw each Batarang would not be a problem. But again, his time would be better spent solving crimes or capturing escaped villains rather than return to where he had a showdown and retrieve any thrown Batarangs.

In the old days, he could have sent Robin out to get them. Unfortunately for Batman, the roll of Robin now commands more respect. Maybe he could offer some sort of bounty on any recovered Batarang. I recall being told that supermarkets used to pay people if they returned any found shopping carts that were removed from their parking lots. I doubt this is the case today but Batman could try to do something similar. He could try to find a team of needy individuals or even homeless folk to go around and gather them. He could pay them $10 bucks for each one they find (or more since he's loaded and the cost of a new one is most likely more).

Whatever the case, Batman is being irresponsible if he's just leaving them lying around. You could think of it as litter or, more realistically, deadly weapons being left behind. Besides the criminal element that could find them, there's also the possibility that children could find them. Couldn't you just imagine kids playing Batman and accidentally throwing one and harming someone? If Batman doesn't already have a plan to recover all his discarded Batarangs, he really owes it to the people of Gotham City to keep his toys where they belong.

Maybe they're biodegradable like Spider-Man's webbing.

lol, it's almost kismet cause we were just discussing this over at karbacca's thread on his new pic and apparently they go down his pants :)

Maybe they're biodegradable like Spider-Man's webbing.

If Batman:TAS Tim Drake taught us anything, its that Baterangs are collected by young biys with delusions of vigilante grandeur.

I hope he doesn't send Aflred on an errand to collect all of them at the end of the day :P

Didn't some of them happen to find their way to other people's hand? I kinda remember Spoiler having collected some on her patrol nights...

They evaporate or dissolve in a few hours.

   
While pondering this one needs music i think..

  The Mind of the Bat (Batman Arkham Asylum)

If police got them than gordan woud make sure they went back to batman.

Batman hires all the local street ruffians to collect them all at the end of every week. Then he pays them a quarter for every Batarang. Some of those kids have purchased Mustangs from the money.

"Whatever the case, Batman is being irresponsible if he's just leaving them lying around." You know what else is irresponsible? Puting underage kids in danger. If Billy Batson was his sidekick that would of been understandable but underage sidekick boys with no supepowers !!?? 

He's rich and he can buy more when he throws them.

If Batman:TAS Tim Drake taught us anything, its that Baterangs are collected by young boys with delusions of vigilante grandeur.

He lets civilians collect them letting them now that the urban legend known as batman exists so in other words left behind batarangs  indicate that  batman is active. 

I'm guessing they always come back somehow (that's what boomerangs do), I'm thinking he trains bats to go retrieve them, or maybe the hunchback guy who lives in the batcave go picks them up!

can't remember the exact issue but Bruce mentioned that theri were tracers in the batarangs so that if they can't collect them all before the police get to the crime scene they can collect them later

In HUSH he said that he is picking them up himself after he finished a mission and sometimes he forgets one or two .

I don't know how expensive they are considering he just gave Stephanie Brown a machine that makes special batarangs like goo batarangs, electrical batarangs, freeze batarangs and fire batarangs....she can even combine 2 of them into one batarang with a different ability on each half

Huntress picks em up

Batman has always employed children that nobody cares about to do his dirty work in the past, why would this be any different?

They become memorabilia on the fireplacemantle for anyone lucky enough to find one. (or been hit by it)

Conceptually they don't actually exist. Thats the trick, they are illusions. Batman likes to throw metaphors at people, but what you don't realize is that you are already the master *cue yellow glowing hands* 

same person that cleans up and rebuilds all the destruction heroes/villians cause while the ones responsible walk away for tea.

Well im guessing that the majority of them come back to him due to them being boomarangs, so the cleanup really woulnd't be to much of a hassle, he either picks them up hen the case is done, or when he's on patrole picks up some that are just laying there.

Are the exspencive to make? well i do remeber Tim saying in an issue of teen titans that he was able to disasemble and send the pieces of a batmobile from Gotham to San Fransisco without bruce of Alfred raising an eyebrow by taking the money to do it out of the battarang fund. So exspencive ideed.

They're imbedded with nano-sized Bat-Homing Signals.  So on the quiet nights in Gotham City, Alfred goes out on the Bat-Bicycle & hunts them all down with the Bat-GPS.  Dick used to do it, but started to complain about child-labour... Tim refused to do it... no-one dared to ask Damian to do it... so poor Alfred was lumbered with the job.
   

Bat-Mite appears from the fifth dimension to follow up Batman after the caped crusader has used his batarangs. He collects them all and then turns them into jelly doughnuts.

Is that a ridiculous enough answer to this question?

If kids found them and used them to play batman it would be just like the ninja South Park episode. Someone would throw a batarang in poor Butters' eye.....

I think we all should just accept that the batarangs get left where they are. There's no way he'd spend the time picking them up and he absolutely would not pay anyone to bring them to him -- that'd be a major breach of security.

When people fire guns, they don't usually pick the shells up (unless they're particularly smart and calculating). I guess the shells aren't deadly like the batarangs, but they still leave majore trails. And think about guys like the Punisher. How many times has Frank ditched a empty weapon to grab another? Talk about deadly.

I kind of think of it like this: if a kid finds a batarang in an alley, it's like him finding a shard of glass, or a thugs discarded pocket knife, or a druggies hypodermic needle; they know they shouldn't touch it, and if they do, well, that's a choice that they make. I think we're operating under the assumption that everyone in Gotham is enamored by the presences of Batman, and I just don't think that's the case anymore. I mean, by now, the people of Gotham must be used to having Batman around -- it's been so many years! So, the idea of Batman probably wouldn't care the weight that it did in the beginning of his career. It's been said so many times before: Batman is a Gotham City urban legend. I doubt the majority of Gothamites are so enamored by Batman by now that when they find a piece of bat-shaped metal, which must be pretty common sights, they care to pick it up.

i think they all to to a bar somewhere in Gotham and talk about the past....

Officially there is a homing beacon/tracer or whatever you wanna call it embedded into the Batarang so I think Bats has his bases covered with that logistical problem.  What I would like to also be the case is that each batarang, if left out for long enough, has a self-destruct or self-decompose mechanism built into it just in case Bats or Alfred gets lazy and forgets to pick them up, which is an unlikely scenario anyway.  But just say for the sake of argument that it did and there was no way either of them could get to the lost batarang in time.  Such a destruct-decompose mechanism would make sense unless the cost of maintaining the current stock was more than just creating new batarangs, again, doubtful considering Wayne's billionaire status.

They dissolve after an hour =]

well what's the point of having a sidekick if you can't send him around to pick up your stuff, like an unpaid intern.

I like to think there is some huge bank-type vault under GCPD filled with tens of thousands, maybe more, of bat-a-rangs collected over the years all separated by category (sharp, electric, gas, etc) and user (Batman, Nightwing, Robin, etc.).

They fly off into the Phantom Zone and kicks more Kryptonian butt than Superman!

Huntress picks em up

If Arkham Asylum is anything to go on, they disappear immediately after impact.

This child part reminds me of the Ninja episode of South Park when Butters gets a ninja star in his eye just i imagine a bat a rang LOL

Back in Hush he said he usually goes back to a crime scene and collects them after a fight but he did admit that he missed some from time to time, that's what cost him and made him fall when Hush cut his rope with a batarang

They're imbedded with nano-sized Bat-Homing Signals.  So on the quiet nights in Gotham City, Alfred goes out on the Bat-Bicycle & hunts them all down with the Bat-GPS.  Dick used to do it, but started to complain about child-labour... Tim refused to do it... no-one dared to ask Damian to do it... so poor Alfred was lumbered with the job.   

I don't know how expensive they are considering he just gave Stephanie Brown a machine that makes special batarangs like goo batarangs, electrical batarangs, freeze batarangs and fire batarangs....she can even combine 2 of them into one batarang with a different ability on each half

Bat-Mite appears from the fifth dimension to follow up Batman after the caped crusader has used his batarangs. He collects them all and then turns them into jelly doughnuts.Is that a ridiculous enough answer to this question?

I guess I always just assumed that Batman retrieved them or they ended up with the police and Gordon took care of them from there. You know, they'd all get bagged as evidence during a crime scene investigation, so Gordon could get a hold of them and either destroy them or put them somewhere where Batman could get to them easily. 

Now we know what Robin was good for.

 I imagine people selling  batarangs on Ebay