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#1 Want a License to Hunt Drones? This Colorado Town Just Might

Posted: Wed Sep 11, 2013 3:18 pm
by frigidmagi
Time
Things you can hunt that begin with the letter “D” for $200, Alex: ducks, deer, doves…drones? If the residents of a small Colorado town about an hour east of Denver vote to make it so next month, then yep, drones, too.

(WATCH: Snake Found in Starbucks Toilet)

Deer Trail, Colo. residents are already lining up for permits, reports Reuters, apparently keen to blast unmanned aerial vehicles out of the sky. Town clerk Kim Oldfield said the whole thing started when resident Phillip Steel, worried that the country’s becoming “a surveillance society,” pitched the idea of issuing permits to hunt drones as a way to protest their rise (hypothetically anyway) on the national scene.

That led town trustees to decide last month that the question warranted a public vote. And once the decision to put it to a vote was reached, applications for the $25 permits began pouring in — not just from Deer Trail residents, says Oldfield, but everywhere, including a few from folks living in the U.K. and Canada.

“I stopped counting when it hit 985,” Oldfield told Reuters. Deer Trail’s population was 546 as of the 2010 census.

Not that anyone’s looking to pick off a bunch of unmanned vehicles, says Oldfield, noting that those in favor of the drone-hunting permits want to stage a contest — basically a skeet shoot using drones in lieu of clay disks — which could promote tourism and allow the city to reap a little extra revenue.

Still, the Federal Aviation Administration isn’t amused, issuing a note last summer when the ball started rolling pretty much warning people to keep their weapons holstered if a drone happens by, permit or no. ”Shooting at an unmanned aircraft could result in criminal or civil liability, just as would firing at a manned airplane,” said the government agency.
I think this is very amusing and an inventive way for a small town to protest (and make money). That said, I find alot of the "DRONES! IN AMERICA! :shock: kinda well... Silly.

The police departments won't be using drones with hellfire missiles cruising around to reign death on anyone with the wrong bumper stickers. They'll be using them in place of helicopters. Basically cheaper air recon. If you're okay with police helicopters, you shouldn't be in a muck panic over drones.

#2 Re: Want a License to Hunt Drones? This Colorado Town Just M

Posted: Wed Sep 11, 2013 8:50 pm
by Josh
While a lot of the drone stuff is just a modern-day reinvention of the black helicopter hysteria of the nineties, it's not the prospect of death from above that concerns me. Police choppers have a limited loiter and deployment, whereas drones can stay up forever and a day and more economically blanket an area with round-the-clock surveillance. That, I'm not so keen on when applied to domestic stuff.