Texas Legislators Think Drones Armed With Tasers And Pepper Spray Will Stop School Shootings

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the whatever-helps-kill-us-makes-us-stronger? dept

In the only country in the world where this sort of violence happens frequently enough it’s become a despairing meme, legislators continue to ignore the obvious solutions in favor of throwing money at esoteric options that won’t stop Americans from entering schools to murder children en masse.

In Texas, this problem hits home harder. Not only does the state do everything it can to encourage gun ownership, it is also home to one of the more devastating school shootings in recent history — one in which Uvalde, Texas police officers rushed to the scene of school shooting only to spend nearly 90 minutes doing nothing about it.

The simple answer would be stricter gun control laws. But no Texan legislator is willing to do that, not if they expect to be re-elected. And there are plenty of people who claim the Second Amendment is the best amendment, because arming citizens means the government will be too scared to engage in overreach lest it get [checks notes] shot the fuck up.

In reality, most Second Amendment enthusiasts aren’t arming themselves to prevent the government from being overtaken by authoritarians. After all, they voted for Trump at least twice, and he’s the kind of autocrat their window decals have warned against. Most exercises of the Second Amendment are purely performative — “rolling coal” but it’s dudes in camo walking through Walmarts strapped with AR-15s.

And, given recent election results, perhaps now is not the time to start asking questions about the Second Amendment, not when the inbound president has said stuff that might make us genuinely concerned about our Third Amendment rights.

But it’s all just stupidity. You can either try to implement even the most minimal control over firearms sales and purchases. Or you can do whatever the fuck this bullshit is, as reported by Edward McKinley for the San Antonio Express-News.

Texas public schools could be guarded by drones armed with pepper spray or Tasers under a new bill filed in the Texas Legislature meant to beef up school security. 

The measure would boost funding for safety upgrades and let schools deploy drones in place of the armed guards that lawmakers required on every campus in response to the Uvalde school shooting. Districts have said they don’t have the money to make those hires, and Hearst Newspaper previously found many haven’t complied or have instead armed teachers.

Normal people will obviously ask questions about this proposal. Non-normal people are the ones who won’t ask questions, because it doesn’t threaten their “right” to own guns. But it is completely asinine for multiple reasons.

First of all, pepper spray is not something that can be safely deployed from a distance. It’s aerosolized, which means anyone in the area can be negatively affected, even if the intent is to disable an armed suspect. It has to be deployed up close and directly at the eyes/nasal passages of the target. Unless the drones are going to zooming down to eye level with incoming school shooters, this method has as much potential to harm innocent students and teachers as it has to incapacitate a threat.

Tasers are no better. Closer is better and even Taser maker Axon — or at least its board of ethics — has already objected to mounting Tasers on drones. Of course, none of that objection really matters. The entire Axon ethics board resigned following the company’s announcement it would pursue this option, only to see the company acquire a drone manufacturer that does frequent business with the US Department of Defense.

But even if the tech aligns, it’s still a bad idea. Tasers are not precision weapons. They do their best at close range and, even then, they’re not guaranteed to incapacitate. Firing Taser darts at a moving target from a moving object isn’t a recipe for success.

All in all, it’s about as stupid as thinking the solution is arming teachers. Teachers should not be expected to do the work of trained law enforcement. And teachers should never be expected to consider trading fire with school shooters a part of their job description. Again, the problem is the easy access to weapons, not the lack of defensive options. If anything, dumbass legislators should be advocating for arming students. After all, there are far more students than teachers and surely the presence of 30 or so “good guys with guns” in any classroom would be a significant deterrent to school shootings.

Despite the absolute lack of anything indicating arming drones this way will result in fewer school shootings, government contractors are encouraged by the willingness of legislators to throw money at bad ideas. Mithril Defense has already posted its own opening for an aspiring person who’s apparently going to get paid only a commission for talking more legislators into buying more drones, Tasers, and drone-mounted pepper sprayers.

This CV (of sorts) is inadvertently hilarious:

Our team includes a former Navy SEAL team SIX Command Master Chief, a serial tech entrepreneur, the #1 American drone pilot on ESPN, and various technical teams.

If there’s anything worse for anything than a “serial tech entrepreneur,” I’ve never met it. And despite the presence of SEAL Team Six and ESPN in the write-up, I’m far more interested in the makeup of the “various technical teams.” Keep in mind, this is an hourly position with “upside based on success.” To those interested, I would assume this means minimum wage and an immediate culling from the “advocacy group” once Mithril Defense secures a government contract.

Perhaps the best slam is inadvertent. Here’s how the San Antonio paper describes the company:

Employees for the company, which appears to be named after a magical silver-colored metal from “Lord of the Rings…”

And it would appear the “serial tech entrepreneur” is its founder, Justin Marston, whose LinkedIn profile shows he’s never been able to make anything go ever.

NONETHELESS, Texas legislators — led by Rep. Ryan Guillen — think this is what will solve our school shooting problem.

Guillen’s bill says the drones would be armed with “less lethal interdiction capability by means of air-based irritant delivery or other mechanisms,” and it would require one drone for every 200 students. 

lol

Just flying around in the air dispensing “air-based irritants” like it’s not going to “irritate” the people it’s supposed to be saving far more often than it’s preventing school shootings. And, if I’m doing the math right, this means the state’s educational facilities need to acquire nearly 26,000 drones to comply with the law. And only Guillen knows why one-drone-per-200-students is the appropriate ratio to prevent school shootings, but that’s what he and his supporters are going with.

Not that schools are getting fucked entirely. A state that can’t seem to get behind school funding in any meaningful way will perhaps be talked into funding schools in the most meaningless way. Guillen’s bill amps up per student funding from $10/per to $100/per… but only if that extra money is spent on “hardening campuses, hiring security guards, or starting a drone program.” There will be no educational advantage here. Instead, students will see that extra money being spent on surrounding them with weapons that aren’t actually guns but are allegedly going to protect them from actual guns.

This is dumb stuff that ignores the real issue. It’s not going to save any students from school shooters. But, if implemented, it will cost Texas millions of dollars in the furtherance of nothing more than respecting their right to head out on a shopping trip with a load out that might seem excessive in Call of Duty multi-player. God Bless America.

Filed Under: 2nd amendment, drones, pepper spray, school shootings, taser, texas
Companies: axon, mithril