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North Dakota Legalizes "Less Than Lethal" Weapon-Equipped Police Drones
According to the Daily Beast, writes reader schwit1, North Dakota police will be free to fire 'less than lethal' weapons from the air thanks to the influence of a pro-police lobbyist. That means beanbags, tear-gas, and Tasers, at the very least, can be brought to bear by remote. It's worth noting that "non-lethal" isn't purely true, even if that's the intent behind such technologies. From the article, based partly on FOIA requests made by MuckRock into drone use by government agencies: The bill’s stated intent was to require police to obtain a search warrant from a judge in order to use a drone to search for criminal evidence. In fact, the original draft of Representative Rick Becker’s bill would have banned all weapons on police drones.
Then Bruce Burkett of the North Dakota Peace Officer’s Association was allowed by the state house committee to amend HB 1328 and limit the prohibition only to lethal weapons. “Less than lethal” weapons like rubber bullets, pepper spray, tear gas, sound cannons, and Tasers are therefore permitted on police drones.
They just have significantly better chance than not of not killing you. They are, in fact, "less lethal", but definitely not non-lethal.
For what it's worth, getting shot by a gun is statistically only fatal about 5% of the time. While a taser is lethal even less often than that, it's still clearly lethal.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
What we should all (or maybe rather the far too peaceful people of ND) be highly critical of is why this happened. The state rep from North Dakota was trying to get through a law that would require drone use to be requiring use of a warrant. In order to get this past the lobbying of the state police he had to give them this in return. Why can't the people rise up in disgust and make their voice heard? Why aren't they doing so?
"I submitted with prohibition of any weapons," he continued. "The law enforcement lobby offered an amendment and said that if the amendments were added, they would not oppose. The committee accepted amendments and I didn't fight them because I wanted the bill to pass at least to require warrants. The law says that law enforcement can't use drones weaponized with lethal weapons. But in 2017 when I get back, I will introduce a bill to also include non-lethal."
Except that 'Wordsmithing', in most of your examples is actually useful in professional terms. Let me break it down:
Lethal Force - Force that death is a reasonable, even 'usual' result from. Standard firearms, fragmentary explosives, etc...
Nonlethal - The use of this term is actually depreciated in the force-continuum. It's a sad fact that humans can be both incredibly resilient and incredibly fragile. A disabler that works on a guy able to cut his own arm off that's trapped by a boulder and apply a tourniquet before hiking 26 miles to get to medical care is probably going to be lethal to a 90 year old diabetic great-grandmother. Worse, it's not always apparent who's 'fragile' and who's not.
Less-lethal - The replacement term. It's still potentially lethal, so care should be employed in it's deployment, but as long as you follow the directions, your department shouldn't kill anybody with it any given year.
WMD: Weapon of Mass Destruction. Now, I'm old school with this one, and demand that it be NBC - Nuclear, Biological, or Chemical. And the last is iffy as well. In order for me to count it as a WMD, it needs to be able to destroy city blocks of people, or at least kill more people than any individual practical conventional bomb. I dislike calling a pressure cooker bomb a 'WMD'. So I'd say on a 'killzone' requirement to be a WMD: Several blocks radius OR 'significant' primary duration in time. IE, as a direct intended effect from the bomb, it will keep killing people who enter the area for a significant amount of time after deployment, not just from hazards like structurally compromised buildings.
IED: Improvised Explosive Device. As opposed to a non-improvised one. A very important distinction during my time in the military. Standard munitions have standard means of disarming and disposal. EOD(Explosive Ordinance Disposal) rolls up on a Mark 82 500 pound bomb(or it's Russian equivalent), they know how to make it safe. All that goes out the window when it's an IED. Think of it like a paperwork thing - for a car you put make & model. For a bomb you'd do the same, but IED = 'home built'/unknown/unlisted. So your going 'It's a BOMB' is like saying 'It's a CAR' when I say that a Honda Civic was in an accident.
I don't read AC A human right