Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Drone & Ammo Magazine?

Photo source:  Wired magazine.

Back in August, Chad Love at Field and Stream wrote:

Forget those old-fashioned stationary game cameras. Personal scouting drones will be the next big thing for hunters. Maybe not now. maybe not in five years. But at some point in the not-too-distant future, some enterprising company is going to design and market a personal drone geared toward hunters. Bank on it. According to the story, right now anyone can cobble together a viable home-made drone using off-the-shelf components for less than $2,000. And with advances in technology and miniaturization, the cost to do so will only continue to decrease.

Crazy talk? Of course not. We already use drones for hunting -- ask al-Qaeda. And nowdays anyone with a few hundred dollars in their pocket can buy a drone and put a GoPro camera on it and get the kinds of video shots once only dreamed about by Hollywood directors.

How hard would it be to put a small gun on a drone and fly it into forest or field... or through a window for assassination purposes? Not hard, I can assure you. Sure it would probably be a one-shot deal (blow back and all), but you can bet that little problem will be fixed soon enough.

Imagine a world with everyone flying cheap drones with guns on them. The possibilities for extortion, murder, and mayhem are legion, and so too will be the desire and rationalizations of the police, and others, who are likely to use them to invade privacy and snoop in all kinds of ways now unimaginable.
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2 comments:

Sean said...

Even if one did not have a gun on the drone, they would quickly be used for more than scouting. A noisy drone would likely be useful in driving game toward the hunter in the way that dogs are used to drive game.

Drone Beaters?

Jenn said...

Oh great. Then we can shoot anything that moves in the woods from the air.

Sigh.

I'm a bowhunter. I've a rather cynical outlook on the majority of gun hunters (perhaps I've just been misfortunate in the ones I have met...?)