yes he has a gun

Ok let's be honest, half of the people that show up here do so because of the web address and when it doesn't match their search they leave.
STOP DOING THAT!
So, since I have made the mistake of naming the site after this I will oblige and give you people what you want, so here you go...

Yes, Scarecrow has a gun.

If you're reading this it's because you were sitting at home, innocently watching a childhood classic, The Wizard of Oz, and you just so happened to look up at that moment when they were first going to kill the witch, and suddenly...

Yeah that.

This little moment in film history has had people hitting the rewind button over and over again. Sure there are weapons in Oz, tin man has that ax, the munchkins have rifles with flowers shoved in their ends, the door guard for Oz has a  spear, and so do all the winkie guards. In fact everyone in this scene, sans Dorothy, has a weapon or two, but there's just something about the Scarecrow waving a pistol around that seems so out of place. What the heck, why does he even have that? An even better question is why they gave the gun to the one that is reportedly brainless? either that was just a really dumb move on their part or Scarecrow just picked it up of his own free will with obvious intent of using it. Forget melting her, a bullet or five will definitely take care of the witch problem, forget the innocent children watching this. Wow Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, just wow.

Another point of interest is that the pistol, along with all the other weapons, are gone by the time the flying monkeys appear. The only one with a weapon is the tin woodsman and he makes a valiant effort to chop them out of the sky, but when push comes to shove that pistol would have been so much more helpful.

So where did it go?

There is a lot of controversy over this actually, some figure he dropped it when the ghost picks up Tin Man in the woods, and for some reason never picks it back up. Another option could be it goes missing during the cut 'jitter-bug' scene, which was supposed to be placed between the woods scene and the flying monkey scene and was actually another musical number, but was cut before the film was finished. Or the actor just left it somewhere an forgot it, whoops. Whatever actually happened the pistol is gone, and the most likely reason is that the film makers were trying to tone down the original story to make it a bit more PG, because the original story is actually kind of dark.

In the original story of the Wizard of Oz the scene where we see scarecrow with the gun actually has a body count, and it's partially his fault. You see when the witch sees them coming she sends 40 wolves to kill them all. Tin Man, while Dorothy is sleeping, walks out to meet them and cleaves them all in half, then leaves their bodies to rot. The witch then sends 40 crows; Scarecrow snaps their necks one by one and drops the bodies. She sends 40 killer bees, which Tin Man also kills, then the winkies, which Lion scares off, before resorting to the flying monkeys. SO YEAH, DEAD, DEAD, DEAD, terrorized. Enjoy those nightmares kids!

 

So I guess adding in a gun and cutting the carnage was the best way to go about reworking the story for younger audiences. I could buy that, if the rest of the film wasn't so chockfull of slightly disturbing imagery. I mean the witch taunting Dorothy about Aunt Em never finding where she disappeared to, geez guys. "I'll give you an Auntie EM you little...!"

GAH!! If I'm going to be honest bothering about the scarecrow having a gun should not be the biggest concern for this movie, but inevitably it seems to be the biggest conspiracy in the entire film outside of the bird that looks like the hanging munchkin, and it will always hold it's own place in my heart as the original "What tha...?" moment. Congrats Oz!