Among the items the House will take up today before leaving for its final crackerbarrel weekend is Senate Bill 80, a nice little measure regulating drones. Prime sponsor Senator Arthur Rusch (R-17/Vermillion) just wants to clarify what drones are, where they can go, and what they can do.
Amendments have pared SB 80 from nine sections to four. Surviving the amendment process are restrictions against flying drones over prisons, jails, and military facilities and using drones to deliver loot to inmates (this happens!). But this week, House Transportation struck the provision Rusch included to bust “any person who sells, transports, manufactures, possesses, or operates any drone capable of firing a bullet or projectile or otherwise be used as a weapon or avenue to inflict harm or damage to any person or property” with Class 5 felony. Senator Rusch told House Transportation (hear timestamp 6:40) that he didn’t think the authors of the Second Amendment “had any idea about flying armed drones over your neighbor,” but the committee still struck the armed-drone prohibition.
In other words, South Dakota legislators will (sensibly) outlaw dropping a pie with a file to your sweetie in the Pen, but they won’t stop you from strapped a pistol to your drone.
Maybe the House should go whole hog and amend SB 80 to allow armed drones in the Capitol.
How does you legislator feel about weaponized drones? Ask them at your cracker barrels and town halls. Can’t attend? Give them a phone call or email.
Once again, like small arms, ban them from military and police first. They are the only ones that want, or will use things like this to harm other people. Weaponized Urban Drones is probably where Trumps $54 billion is going: the New Arms Race.
Right now, we have human robots shooting bombs, tear gas, sometimes lethal “rubber” bullets, and water in freezing conditions at peaceful protesters. Soon we will have kids on computers killing us with non-human robots; at first secret black-ops units like Obama’s, then farmed “out of country” to avoid the Constitution, as Bush did. All following orders from the President or Governors.
That is the future and the future is here now. Obama killed thousands with them, and some of the victims were actually “terrorists”, the rest were women and children. The Governor of North Dakota is likely on the prepaid waiting list.
http://www.amnestyusa.org/pdfs/160722LetterCIAGenCounselAmnesyInternational.pdf
Barry, that is an interesting article. The premise of the article appears to be that the US shot two Hellfire missiles at a grandmother and her grand children out working the fields in Pakistan. That seems to be an extraordinary allegation that makes little common sense.
During WWII and up through Vietnam, carpet bombing and fire bombing of cities and villages were commonplace. Instead of blowing up whole city blocks, we now blow up one house at a time. However, the enemy is embedded with civilians now and purposely uses civilians as human shields. There will always be civilian and collateral damage in war. The US purposely tries to avoid these things, unlike ISIS or Al Queda which seek to purposely attack civilians, women and children. The US rules of engagement seek to limit civilian casualties while our enemies seek to maximize civilian casualties.