Police in North Dakota to get Drones with Tasers

[Mr Saturn64 742]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/26/first-state-legalizes-armed-drones-for-cops-thanks-to-a-lobbyist.html

It seems like the number of differences between the police and army is diminishing.  We saw last year with Ferguson that the police we're heavily armed, but now they're armed in the air as well.  

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

So ND declares itself as a police state.  Nice of them to come out of the closet on that.  Now, for the rest of the police forces in America.

[LexusInfernus 908]

Whats next? Drones with tear gas missiles? Drones that shoot rubber bullets from their machine gun? 

Or are we going for the more South Park-esque approach? 

[Mr Saturn64 742]

^ would any of those surprise you?

The only question is, will they start using them on civilians?  Using drones on criminals is one thing, but If the police start using tasered (and rubber bullet or tear gas) drones on civilians, (protesters, etc.) I'm undoing what my great grandparents did and am getting out of this country.  

  Edited August 28, 2015 by Mr Saturn64  

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

You see what not liking a stamp tax on tea has led to in a couple of centuries.  The founding fathers could never have anticipated the present mess.  Most of them were slave owners and saw nothing wrong in it.  And what good did the Emancipation Proclamation do?  It created the present black population problems because as far as most Americans are concerned, if you are not white (Caucasian) you are a second class person of colour.

The only thing that is missing in the current scenario is Simon Legree and his whip.

[LexusInfernus 908]

^ would any of those surprise you?

The only question is, will they start using them on civilians?  Using drones on criminals is one thing, but If the police start using tasered (and rubber bullet or tear gas) drones on civilians, (protesters, etc.) I'm undoing what my great grandparents did and am getting out of this country.  

No they would not. 

Also, criminals are still civilians. You aren't a criminal until you are convicted in a court of law and even then when you get out you still have the same human rights along with several other rights as people who aren't convicted criminals. 

 And what good did the Emancipation Proclamation do? 

It ended slavery, and with it a system that reduced people to 'things', not human, to be sold on the free market. 

[citycowboy 183]

You're all slaves. The democrats won. You're also all communists. The Russians won the Cold War. That's why we're on the same team as Cuba now. You're all Nazis. The Germans won. That's why you have higher tariffs and aren't allowed to compete for international manufacturing and places like Chicago are ghost towns. Baloney? I was told we beat the Koreans in 1953, so I don't worry about them. We conquered Lebanon in 1958. What? We beat Korea in 1871? I'm sorry. Oh yeah, I remember, we beat Vietnam in 1861 too. Afghanistan was long gone in 1981 and the whole middle east was conquered in 1991. You guys sound like a bunch of whackos like that Scott Pelley guy on CBS when you bring up old timey stuff. Everyone knows that the Dakota War was over in 1862, and everyone who lives in the Dakotas lives in beautiful craftsman homes with white picket fences and live off their retirements from the big natural gas companies. 

Maybe theres a reason the Lakotah Tribe moved to Wyoming a couple of years ago and the Dakotas is one of the only areas where the whole state is in the black. 

I'm just kidding, but seriously though in regards to the drones with tasers thing, thats just there because the technology exists. I think they exist because somebody out there is trying to be innovative to make money, and not because some whacko requested them to be made to keep the people in line. 

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Watch your dates.  Your technology is out by a century.

Cops with drones are just another misuse of technology ahead of the public mores.

[Linoa06 1,374]

Oo, one step closer to those annoying Enclave music blasting robots from Fallout

[AkemiAzula 280]

I imagine the drug gangs and terrorists will soon equip themselves with similar technology so little sense in being annoyed the police have them.

[Odainsaker 2,136]

Too late, for on top of the voyeur stalker drones, White House lawn attack drones, drones trying to ram airliners over airports, drones harassing firefighters trying to battle dangerous blazes, and even ISIS flying their own terrorist army drones, we now already have kids mounting and firing handguns from drones and even criminals smuggling drugs and guns into prisons using drones.  I'm sure someone is already practicing how to fly a drone carrying a pipebomb or balloon full of anthrax that can be remotely popped over a crowded stadium.  A police drone with a taser is behind the curve.

That funny Audi commercial with the Zerg death delivery drones may be more prescient than we dare admit:

 

[Superbacon 380]

What could go wrong?

[citycowboy 183]

First there were tasers. Then there were drones. Then there were drones with tasers.

If North Dakota wanted to shut people down, they would make drones with automatic guns mounted to them.

I'm as informed as the next guy who sits on the internet all night, but this doesn't worry me. TPP does.

[AkemiAzula 280]

Well if they are really so easy to obtain and so unregulated then I am surprised there has not been a wave of drone related incidents. 

In America some people shoot up schools, or maybe just rob a convenience store at gunpoint. Imagine street gangs fighting with drones, banks held up by drones, planes shot by drones...

Yeah. Police methinks are welcome to a couple of their own.

[crishy 57]

I rather see a tasered criminal/dangerous person than a dead/wounded cop. Even if it means chasing them with a taser-armed drone. Just saying.

That being said, there are better long-term alternatives to protecting people and officer safety and maintaining public order than uparming cops to maintain their safety. Banning or restricting gun sales anyone? That would help us here in Canada too, since the vast majority of guns used in crimes in Canada (which has rather strong weapon ownership restrictions) are bought, ahem, in the US. Also implementing some good socio-economical programs in place, though most would likely be considered too expensive/left leaning/useless for the average right leaning American taxpayer so no point mentioning it here.

But do not expect American police to be limited to bats and pepperspray as police in UK are, with lax gun laws and high gun ownership that invariably trickles down to persons with criminal intent.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

There is a cure for all this.  Boeing recently demonstrated a portable laser system that can knock down a drone in a few seconds.  Seemed they used a carbon dioxide laser (infra red) to warm up the subject.

[Sabretooth78 808]

Banning or restricting gun sales anyone?

Yes, because the criminals causing most of the problems are so wont to following laws.

Bans aren't the solution, nor is arming everyone.  It's not a simple problem.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

In the United States, the cat is out of the bag and won't be put back in.  The interpretation of the second amendment has come to mean "any" firearms at all.  At the time this bit of constitutional law was put on the books "arms" meant muskets, musketoons, swords, and knives as that was pretty much the extent of weapons then.

If you want to discuss firearms limitations that should be in the second amendment thread, which IMHO has been beaten to death.

Sticking to a fundamentalist law is similar to sticking to fundamentalist rules in the Old Testament of the Bible, even though the New Testament supersedes it totally.  The problem is that nobody has had the guts nor the strength to redefine the true meaning of the second amendment and other traditional parts of the U.S. constitution other than a few faint wishes from the Supreme Court.  I think it would be impossible for the Constitution of the United States of America to ever be re-opened in a full constitutional convention because it would take a couple of decades at least, and the electoral system would interfere so much that the whole idea becomes moot.  It would also take agreement from most of (all of?) the states to install a new version.

In Canada, an amendment to the Constitution Act of 1982 takes the agreement of all the provinces, no exceptions.  Re-opening our constitution, for example to abolish the Senate, could never happen because the provinces would never agree.  I can't imaging trying to get 50-odd "sovereign" states to agree to anything.

So we are both prisoners of our own ancestors.  The implications of advancing technology never occurs to people who are writing constitutional things for some reason, usually because they are legal minds and not technological ones.  As a result, our use of technology is always ahead of our morals.  This often results in great harm.