Axon Ditches Plan for Weaponized Taser Drones (Majority of Ethics Board Resigns)
wsj.com
wsj.com
Now let’s say you have a drone that fires a taser. For a mass shooting event, yes, that sounds very reasonable. But of course it will be used for many, many more situations. How long before it’s standard practice for police to send an autonomous taser of some sort to knock on doors to keep occupants at bay while they search the house?
I don’t know which tradeoff are worth it, but less-lethal weapons don’t just replace the lethal ones, they end up being used in a much more expansive set of circumstances than the lethal ones they replace.
The first high-profile case happened just 3 months after BART Police were supplied with them in 2009.[^2]
[1]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2021/04/1...
Back in the day, the cops would beat the crap out of people with nightsticks. Guns were less commonly used - that changed in the 80s.
I would imagine it's a pretty good guess that police already tase at least 1000x that many people every year. I'm having trouble finding good national LEO statistics, but "Taser International" claims 900 Taser uses a day. I don't think we should do anything to encourage that.
The bigger problem is no-knock warrants which created dangerous situations for legal firearm owners and the police themselves, with the only rationalization being flushing drugs.
I would hope that police could talk a situation down to the point the nobody (else) gets shot.
If you're after a mass shooter, today anyway, that would be an ROV activity: a human pilot flying it could distinguish cops, perps, and vics and fire one taser.
If you ask for autonomy, then you're leaping into Slaughterbot territory (see link below someone already posted) and you might have thousands of them in a theater of operations.
The endless videos of people being tased into compliance is bizarre, no less the number of voices which condone the act.
I see a taser-drone improving outcomes rather than a slippery slope kind of thing. A lot of times when police are dealing with an unstable/violent subject 1) they don't want to shoot them, and 2) have to get close to them to taser them. But getting close to them gives them the opportunity to be dangerous towards the cops.
For example this guy, who was probably having a mental health crisis, just got killed because he threw molotov cocktails at cops: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/rale...
If they had some kind of long range taser, he might still be alive.
Pursuing an extended research path is just one element of getting this right."
https://www.axon.com/news/technology/axon-committed-to-liste...
-- not sure "ditches" is - quite the right word here? --
We need more ways of incapacitating a dangerous individual without resorting to killing them.
Why would we look at a sword and consider it a shield?
I don't know what countries you're referring to "that have negligible mass shooting events" but I guess within the developed world "most countries" here is "every country other than the USA" ? I mean I'm open to other suggestions but, sadly and tragically, it seems to me the USA is out in front to a significant degree.
Saying that those other countries "don't have better mental healthcare" might be technically correct (or it may not I don't know for sure) but what does it mean when large swathes of the population in the USA can't access it anyway ? How many of those who perpetrate mass killings in the USA are actively being cared for ?
I don't know how to comment on the gun database thing. These other countries have gun databases but the key thing is you just can't buy a gun unless you have a very good reason to own one. When you can buy a gun it's not an automatic weapon. I mean I can't think of a developed world country, other than the USA, where it's possible to buy or own such a weapon legally. So regardless of the quality of such databases, and I'm not saying they're better or worse, the main thing is that there's just not many entries in such databases.
> Something fundamental has happened to American culture and it’s not clear what solves that.
I agree and I'm deeply sorry for it being the case.
I read an article recently I now can't find which discussed the Las Vegas[1] killer and attempted to put him in set of men of a certain age who have economically "failed" (I don't like that term) and how that was viewed by US society in a less forgiving way than in other countries and how it also led to lack of treatment for depression etc. I thought that was interesting but as I can't find the article it doesn't take us far. If anyone recognises it I'd be interested to know.
I agree mental health and gun control are important tools and maybe we need uniquely American solutions to this uniquely American problem. But something has broken in our culture that precipitates this.
Fwiw, the US never had this problem before the mid 90s.
The macro problem is decades of 2nd amendment “purism.” No other country has this problem to the extent that the USA has. Also, no other country has such lax gun laws. At least no country of which I’m aware.
In regard to this matter, I honestly don’t see what the political paths going forward could be for the USA.
It's much easier both practically and legislatively to prevent a mass shooting than it is to intervene in and halt one.
Obviously making it harder to get guns will prevent them, but I’m talking and asking about stopping an engaged active shooter.
Even a single soldier that catches the enemy by surprise while they’re resting or asleep is going to make an absolute carnage. This is known in the military since warfare is a thing and has been used by many successful generals.
It must not get to the point of an active shooter being on the loose, and somehow in other countries it manages to be a very strange occurrence, where the guns have been smuggled by a foreign enemy power, the gunners have been indoctrinated by whatever cult got their turn today, etc.
You also managed to skirt the other part that has been mentioned. If they are ever deployed, these toys will eventually kill the wrong person, which could be a child. Given that all you are interested about is in stopping the active shooter, will you deem this death justified, and agree that there is no liability because “the code did it”?
This is a symptom of severe underlying institutional failure.
Shouldn’t we address why we’re failing our children so spectacularly, such that our institutions are literally turning them into mass murderers at a historically unprecedented rate?
The gun is ancillary. The fact that it’s happening at all should be a klaxon wake-up call for institutions, mental health experts, educators, parents, and society.
Instead, we’re screaming about magazine sizes and the types of guns used by children driven to mass murder.
Like, uh, maybe ask yourselves why Jeremy is so disaffected?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_(song)
> After coming into class late that morning, [Jeremy] Delle was told to get an admittance slip from the school office. He left the classroom, and returned with a .357 Magnum revolver. Delle walked to the front of the classroom, announced "Miss, I got what I really went for", put the barrel of the firearm in his mouth, and pulled the trigger before his teacher or classmates could react.
Admittance slips. In-school suspension. Truancy laws. Zero-tolerance. Schools have become inescapable hell-holes for children that don’t fit the cookie-cutter institutional mold, but we’d apparently rather argue about the magazine size those children use once a vanishingly small percentage of them finally just lose their shit.
We choose to have more guns than people in this country and we choose to make them easy to attain and possess. If we add friction to some/all of these processes, then there will be fewer guns.
On a forum where people discuss applications, count clicks, clickthroughs and "dark patterns," this should be mathematically obvious.
Then you get to trace the chain of custody of the shooters guns and start arresting the people supplying arms to psychotics.
Back in the 90s when the assault weapons ban was in place, private sales prices for legal AR-15s were easily 3-5x more in 1995 dollars.
You regulate the legal sales to keep guns away from unqualified individuals. There such a glut of firearms on the market, a black market will spring up, so when those customers kill people, you go up the food chain and throw the black market arms dealers in prison where they belong.
Regulation works. There are people with NFA licenses who own Gatling guns, Tommy guns, BARs, etc. These are true firearms enthusiasts who don’t hurt anyone. Use a similar framework and get the crazy people away from firearms.
Felon's can't have guns already, and the quickest way to felon status is looking at someone cross-eyed with a firearm, and furthermore, if you're going off the handle and using it, I'm pretty sure your next visit to the ballot box is the last thing you're worried about.
The lowers are the only regulated part in the USA.
Raise the price, reduce demand and risk.
I’m not worried about amateur machinists making homemade weapons with bird shit bullets. The higher risk people in that category are people like Timothy McVeigh making IEDs, and we as a society were able to regulate fertilizer sales to reduce that risk.
If not, why not?
It’s even more clearly legal with the 2nd amendment, as taxation is clearly associated with regulation and paying taxes is a long established and enumerated power of the US government.
What’s the justification for registration and taxes on an individual citizen exercising their own first amendment rights?
Or their voting rights, for that matter?
I think that gun fanciers have benefited from a live let live attitude for a long time. As children continue to get slaughtered, I think the counter reaction to current gun stance will be extreme.
Personally, I grew up a country boy and had a .22 when I was 6. My position has changed and I’m not alone.
Thats not to say that some common-sense gun laws wouldn’t be a net benefit to society but they would ultimately do nothing to stop massacres from occurring.
Or are you just saying, “guns are illegal in countries where guns are illegal.”
Civility is having the means to end someone else's life, and not using it. I assure you, there is nothing more inherently civil about a government that refuses it's citizenry the right to arms.
Forgetting about the enormous ethical implications, how is this supposed to work technically?
The intro image shows what looks like a taser mounted on a quad copter. Friedman seems to have a point. How exactly is a quad copter supposed to get into a locked classroom?
I think the answer comes earlier:
> In addition to including schools, Axon’s revised plans for Taser-equipped drones also called for the drones to be activated by a system of AI-powered surveillance. The ethics board has long advised Axon against the use of persistent surveillance systems such as this in its products.
Sooner or later, this is where it all leads. By the time there's an active shooter, it's too late. Surveillance system will encounter little of the opposition that robotic tasers will. Not that the resistance is that organized or widespread to be begin with. If you're ok with an armed cop on campus, why not an armed drone.
The "nothing to hide" argument will no doubt carry the day as it has at every stage along our current trajectory. Stop the criminal before they can act. That's the sane way to deal with violence. I can just hear the howls of righteous disapproval against anyone who questions "the science" on this.
Not an expert, but I'd guess you break a window and fly the drone in through the broken window?
You mean like in Ukraine right now, where they are dropping grenades from DJI drones?
https://www.cnn.com/cnn/2021/10/20/politics/drone-attack-syr...
Stop having mass shooters !
https://www.theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-na...
Sit and wait for someone to go get the drone and deploy it?
The use case here seems weirdly specific.
Whether or not police should use such tooling, and in what circumstances it's appropriate, is a fair point for debate. I just don't believe that Axon refusing to develop the tech will ultimately prevent it from becoming available.
Does this mean that the people who most objected to something will no longer be in a position to influence future decisions by the company?
- metal detectors are frowned upon (https://detroit.chalkbeat.org/2022/5/26/23143403/detroit-pub...)
- automatically locked doors are faulty and don’t really stop you if you happen to get in. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/06/buttigieg-s...)
- armed police at school have been rejected already by many urban school district student bodies (https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/06/06/students-push-back-on...)
Therefore, I propose:
- Regulate access to guns; require training, background checks, and a database of gun owners that is cross-checked against mental health records and criminal legal records - Regulate gun tech for civilians; don't allow magazines or speed-loaders for civilian guns, so it takes longer to reload (will help with how easy mass-shootings are now) and disallow other features that are designed to make killing in battle more efficient (basically just allow hunting and target-shooting guns with reduced reload efficiency) - Cover mental health (and other medical procedures) for all Americans
Mental health records generally are sealed like all medical records. Are you proposing they be accessible?
For instance the Virginia tech shooter received mental health care most of his adolescence, bought a gun legally and still committed the worst school shooting to date.
My question is around stopping an active shooter once it’s happening.
This is like treating the symptoms, not the disease. Cops should be sufficient for stopping an active shooter, and if they are not then that's their failure. It's society's failure to let it get to that point in the first place.
In my experience, many people proposing additional gun legislation really have no idea what's been in place in many states and/or the entire country for years (e.g. background checks on almost all gun sales, waiting periods, magazine restrictions, weapon restrictions, etc.). Also, it doesn't help that studies have been done by decidedly anti-gun organizations that show universal background checks do nothing to reduce gun crime and even suicide [0].
The best way to stop an active shooter is obviously to prevent the crime. The next best are trained individuals with firearms, and since time is of the essence you might want them already onsite. We have armed guards for banks even though the money is generally FDIC insured. We have armed guards for cash transfers and even coin pickups from grocery stores. Yeshivas often have armed guards — why can't we harden secular schools? And no, literally no one is saying teachers have to be armed.
[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10472...
Awesome, now we're comparing America's problems here to what is effectively an occupied war zone.
Perhaps further mental health related laws are a no-go, however reducing the effectiveness of firearms through restrictions on features seems like a no-brainer. Remove the ability for a shooter to pull the trigger more than once per 5+ seconds and require them to concentrate on reloading while their heart is pumping and they are shaking and you will likely reduce the deaths from any one shooting spree.
That’s a willful misinterpretation of the 2nd amendment that has been specifically rejected by the Supreme Court.
It’s also contrary to many state constitutions, which provide an even more definitive individual, affirmative right to bear arms.
I can interpret the text how I want, regardless of the opinion of a captured, political organization like the SC.
> It’s also contrary to many state constitutions, which provide an even more definitive individual, affirmative right to bear arms.
See: Article VI, Paragraph 2 of the U.S. Constitution (again, I reject the SC's opinion on these matters, so I believe the supremacy clause should override those state's constitutions)
I'm not going to reply to you again, though, because clearly we have different base axioms we're starting from here.
That wouldn't make it reasonable, but you could.
It was the correct interpretation of the 2nd Amendment as supported by the Supreme Court for two centuries until they changed their mind in 2008, and even then four justices dissented.
What the Constitution says and what Constitutional rights exist and in what form comes down to the subjective interpretation of the court, and as history has shown, even recently, that interpretation can turn on a dime.
>It’s also contrary to many state constitutions, which provide an even more definitive individual, affirmative right to bear arms.
Those constitutions were either updated after Heller or else were unconstitutional prior to 2008.
Hardly; your interpretation was incorrect when considered against the contemporaneous definitions of both “regulated” and “militia”
Contemporaneous writings by the bill of rights’ authors only further bolsters the argument against this creative reinterpretation of the second amendment proposed by modern prohibitionists.
> Those constitutions were either updated after Heller or else were unconstitutional prior to 2008.
You’re arguing that Colorado’s constitution was unconstitutional from when it was written in 1876 until 2008?
“The right of no person to keep and bear arms in defense of his home, person and property, or in aid of the civil power when thereto legally summoned, shall be called in question …”
See article 2, section 13 of the original 1876 Colorado constitution:
https://archives.colorado.gov/sites/archives/files/Colorado%...
It has remained in its original formulation ever since:
<https://advance.lexis.com/documentpage/?pdmfid=1000516&crid=...>
See the way mental illness is treated in aviation - mental health care is inaccessible to pilots because seeking help for serious issues will put a black mark on your record and end your career. So pilots with serious mental health issues intentionally avoid getting help.
Not that it's a bad idea just that it's not as easy as it seems. Penalties for seeking medical care push people away from seeking care and in turn make the health issues worse.